News Releases and Statements

Shawn Thomas Conaway, 45, of Baker City, Oregon, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to 60 months in federal prison for attempted travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, Special Agent in Charge Brad Bench of ICE’s HSI Seattle Field Office and U.S. Attorney Bart M. Davis announced.

Thomas Close is awaiting trial on charges of production of child pornography related to his alleged surreptitious recording of boys changing after swimming as part of Boy Scout activities. Close, 40, lived in Richland County. He was known as “Aqua Joe” because he worked with the Boy Scouts of America, often with their swimming program.

Reid Derrick Witcher, 45, was arrested after authorities executed a state search warrant at his Odessa home. According to the filed federal criminal complaint, Witcher said he has been downloading and viewing child pornography for about 10 years, and he possessed about 100,000 images of child pornography contained in electronic media.

After a two-week trial, David John Telles Jr., was sentenced Tuesday to serve 302 months in prison by a U.S. District Judge for sex crimes involving a minor.

Ty Lee Treddenbarger, 54, of Burien, Washington, pleaded guilty in October 2018, admitting he photographed and saved images of his molestation of minor victims between the ages of 13 and 16.

Raymond Luis Peltier, 43, of Surprise, will also serve a consecutive term of lifetime probation upon his release from prison, and will have to register as a sex offender.

Christopher Clay Roman-Tuttle, 33, now of Spokane, Washington, who also uses the name Christopher Clay Tuttle, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson. Once he completes the prison sentence, Tuttle will be required to register as a sex offender and will be on supervised release for the rest of his life.

Aaron Reed, 30, of Rocklin, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison today for sexual exploitation of children, receiving child pornography, and transferring obscene material to minors.

Nicholas Shreck, a 41-year-old Seattle, Washington man, was found to be in possession of images of sexual assaults of children and was sentenced to 70 months in prison and 20 years supervision.

Jeremy James Cherry, has a 2001 King County Superior Court conviction for rape of a child and attempted possession of child pornography.

Leonard Bernard Lewis, 33, of Seattle, pleaded guilty in February 2019, admitting that he transported images of child rape and abuse on his personal electronic devices when he traveled from Seattle to London on March 1, 2018.

Naasón Joaquín García (Joaquín García) and his co-defendants allegedly committed these crimes between 2015 and 2018 while leading La Luz Del Mundo, an international religious organization headquartered in Mexico with reportedly more than one million followers worldwide.

Jerry Zweitzig, 71, the former pastor of Horsham Bible Church on Upland Avenue in Horsham, faces a maximum possible sentence of 170 years imprisonment, a minimum mandatory term of 15 years, 5 years of supervised release, and a $1,500,000 fine.

Peter James Hufferd, 47, was on federal supervision living in sex offender housing in Seattle when law enforcement discovered he was secretly using a cell phone to communicate with minor females via social media. 

Richard Blong, 28, was charged after an investigation into his online solicitation of three minor victims (all between the ages of 14 and 16 years old) to produce and send him sexually explicit photos of themselves, and his in-person meeting with one of the minor victims, during which he engaged in sexual contact with her and produced sexually explicit photos of her.  These offenses occurred throughout 2018.

Special Agent in Charge Brad Bench of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Seattle Field Office and U.S. Attorney Bart M. Davis announced today that a federal jury sitting in Pocatello returned guilty verdicts against Lex Bennett Goodwin, 34, on five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, transportation of child pornography, and possession of child pornography.

Alexander Greaux-Gomez, 41, was arrested at his place of residence in Salinas following an HSI investigation that revealed that he allegedly engaged in criminal sexual conduct with a 15-year-old female minor.

Operation Blackwrist, which was named after a bracelet worn by one of the victims, was launched by INTERPOL in 2017 following the discovery of material depicting the abuse of 11 boys, all under 13 years old. The material, first identified on the Darkweb, originated from a subscription-based website with nearly 63,000 users worldwide.

Samuel C. Thompson, 34, of Grass Valley, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. to 10 years and four months in prison for receipt of child pornography and attempting to use the internet to entice a child to engage in sexual activity, U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott announced.

According to court documents and information presented to the court, in March and April 2017, Reysean Williams, 28, with the assistance of another individual, Leonardo Gomes, 20, of Pawtucket, RI sex trafficked the 17-year-old in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and on Long Island, New York, by posting advertisements and pictures of the teenager on the website “Backpage.com”.

Danielle Sebenick, 27, was indicted by a federal grand jury in January of 2019 as a result of her trafficking in videos of child pornography on the Internet during November of 2018, while she was employed at the Kids First Swim School in Jenkintown.