Ex-Riverhead teacher and coach who posed as teen on Snapchat to target girls pleads guilty

Ryan McCaffery, 38, admitted to sending explicit images to underage girls and soliciting nude photos from them, DA said

A former Riverhead High School teacher and JV soccer coach who posed as a teenage boy on Snapchat to target underage girls has pleaded guilty to numerous charges related to his arrest in 2025.

Ryan McCaffery, 38, of Ridge pleaded guilty Monday before Acting Supreme Court Justice Karen Wilutis to two counts of first-degree disseminating indecent material to minors as a sexually motivated felony, and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, court records indicate.

McCaffery taught social studies at Riverhead High School and coached the junior varsity boys soccer coach, is expected to be sentenced Oct. 21 to three years in prison, followed by five years of post-release supervision, suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said.

“As a teacher, this defendant had a responsibility to safeguard children, not exploit them,” Tierney said. “He has now admitted to soliciting and distributing child sexual abuse material and will be held accountable for his actions.”

The case began Nov. 4, 2024, when the New York State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that someone had shared child sexual abuse material on Kik, a messaging app, prosecutors said.

State police executed a search warrant at McCaffery’s Ridge home on Jan. 17, 2025, and seized several electronic devices, prosecutors explained.

A forensic analysis of those devices showed that between December 2024 and January 2025, McCaffery posed as a teenage boy and messaged multiple underage girls on Snapchat under the username “c_chambers77,” prosecutors said.

He “quick added” hundreds of random accounts in order to reach young girls, sending them explicit images of himself and asking them for nude images, according to the DA’s office.

Investigators said McCaffery also tried to view and buy additional abuse material and shared at least one such video with another Kik user.

McCaffery resigned from Riverhead High School on Feb. 5, 2025, less than three weeks after the poice raid on his house.

Nine days later, on Feb. 14, 2025, he was arrested in Bergen County, New Jersey, and charged with two counts of second-degree sexual assault, two counts of third-degree child endangerment and two counts of fourth-degree lewdness, NewYork State Police said previously.

Those charges stemmed from sexual online chats in 2022 with victims under 13 years old.

The New Jersey investigation began in October 2022, when the parents of a young girl told Bergen County detectives their daughter had been communicating on Snapchat with a user who solicited nude images and sent naked images of himself, prosecutors said.

New York’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force was alerted in January 2023.

McCaffery has since been convicted of similar crimes in Bergen County, according to Tierney’s office.

New York police arrested McCaffery on the Suffolk charges on May 12, 2025, after he surrendered at the barracks in Riverside.

When McCaffery was indicted, prosecutors asked any parent who believes their child communicated with him through the “c_chambers77” account to call the Suffolk DA’s office at 631.852.2555. State Police have asked concerned parents to call 631.756.3300.

_{Top: Ryan McCaffery’s booking photo (provided by the SCDA’s office).}