OAKLAND — Years after he avoided prison in a child pornography production case, a San Ramon man is back in federal court, this time facing charges that carry a sentence of life behind bars.
Ishaq Ikharo, 28, was indicted on charges of child coercion and enticement, which carries a minimum of 10 years in federal prison and a maximum life sentence, court records show. The indictment lists nine alleged victims, all children with birthdates between 2007 and 2014, who Ikharo allegedly solicited to commit sex acts online.
Court filings say that in late 2024, when Ikharo was on supervised release in his child pornography case, the FBI received a tip from a parent that his underage son “met an individual while playing PlayStation and that individual was soliciting him for nude images/videos.” Ikharo’s online screen names were “shaqattackback” and “shaq1525.” In his last case, he used the screen name “runitup1525,” according to court records.
Ikharo is paralyzed from the waist down, after suffering a spinal injury in a bus accident in 2014, when he was 17. In 2022, he was charged in a New York federal court with child pornography production in a similar case, but later pleaded no contest to child pornography possession. In that case, he wrote an apology letter to the court blaming loneliness.
“I was depressed for the longest time and had no one to talk with, including friends…This meant that I depended on relationships through the internet to have any sort of interaction because of how slowly introverted I had become through the years,” Ikharo wrote. “Unfortunately, down the road of this, I made inappropriate decisions that were flat-out wrong and not fine at all. I did not think properly and was blinded by my own foolishness.”
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara sentenced Ikharo to 10 years of supervised released, but no prison time, court records show. In 2025, prosecutors sought to violate his supervised release, alleging he had not only failed to provide proof of sex offender registration, and that he re-offended by asking multiple minors for lewd pictures. One boy, who was 10-11 at the time, told the FBI he informed Ikharo of his age and Ikharo “was asking the minor for pictures every week,” prosecutors said in court filings.
The indictment, filed Wednesday, says authorities seized three electronic devices from Ikharo, including a Playstation. He has not yet appeared in court for the new charge.