39-year old Francois Garipey sits in jail Sunday night on extortion charges.
He agreed to talk with 23ABC because he says he wants to "clear his name."
“The truth about that is I was just messing with the guy,” Garipey said.
Garipey said he "was just messing" with 3-year-old CSUB psychology professor doctor Theodore Ishida.
On Friday Bakersfield police arrested Ishida after they found his computer with images of child pornography.
BPD also arrested Garipey for attempting to expose the contents of the professor's computer if he did not pay up.
"The extortion thing you know is really stupid and I’m going to handle that in court,” Garipey said.
According to Bakersfield police, Ishida's home was burglarized in August of 2016.
Police say someone took several of Ishida's personal items including his computer. According to detectives four months later Ishida received a call from Garipey and police say Ishida called to let them know what was happening.
"It was in bad taste when I contacted him. I was messing with him. I wanted to make him sweat and let him know the gig is up," Garipey said.
