A former youth pastor from Burlington County has pleaded guilty to persuading underage boys on social media into sending him nude photos.

Sean Higgins, 32, pleaded guilty to four counts of endangering the welfare of children.

Authorities say the incidents happened in 2020, while Higgins was serving as the youth pastor and music leader at Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport and serving as a teacher at the Harbor Baptist Academy, a private school housed in the same facility. Authorities say that none of Higgins’ victims were members of his church or students at his school.

Higgins was accused of adopting a persona of a teenage girl on Snapchat and Instagram and starting conversations with underage boys. He would ask them to send nude photos and then blackmail them into sending videos performing sex acts on themselves or he would send the photos to people on the boys’ contact list.

The investigation began after a boy in Pennsylvania contacted Snapchat and reported an incident.

Higgins will serve a sentence of 27 years in state prison.