News Releases and Statements

Following his 17-year prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore also ordered James Boblett, 34, of Grand Junction, Colo., to serve 10 years on supervised release. The defendant appeared at the sentencing hearing in custody, and was remanded at its conclusion.

Robert Mucha, 58, of Newton, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William H. Walls in Newark to one count of enticing a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity and one count of receiving child pornography. Judge Walls imposed the sentence Wednesday in federal court.

Jason Lee Villasana, 37, of Del Rio, Texas, was sentenced to 180 months imprisonment for receiving and distributing child pornography, and possessing an unregistered firearm. The judge also ordered Villasana to serve a 10-year term of supervised release. Villasana pleaded guilty to the charges Aug. 21, 2013.

Fourteen men operating a child pornography website on the Darknet's Onion Router, also known as Tor, have been arrested and charged as part of a conspiracy to operate a child exploitation enterprise, following an extensive international investigation by ICE's HSI and USPIS.

Based on investigative clues in the photos, HSI special agents believe that this person may now live in, or had visited, north Texas at the time these photos were taken sometime in April 2013.

Iberto Morales, 31, pleaded guilty Jan. 6. According to court documents, in February 2013 Iberto possessed between 300 and 600 images showing minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Many of the images portrayed very young children engaged in sadism, masochism and violence.

A Dade City middle school teacher, David Wendel Thompson, was arrested Friday for using Facebook to attempt to knowingly persuade two minor females from Belize to engage in sexually explicit conduct.

Charles Ray Benavidez, a former aviation ordnanceman second class, pleaded guilty in January to knowingly recruiting a 17-year-old female to engage in commercial sex acts in Kings and Tulare counties.

Victor Duane Smith, 59, initially came under law enforcement scrutiny in July 2013 when he used the Fresno County Public Library's public wireless system to view child pornography through an Internet file-sharing program.

Thomas Cramer, 41, was sentenced by US District Court Frank P. Geraci, Jr. and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York.

Scott Wade Markle was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake. In 2005, Markle was convicted of the same crime and was required to register as a sex offender.

Richard Zachary Gardner, 23, of Anderson, Ind., was sentenced March 14 to 70 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, Southern District of Indiana.

John S. Longo has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on charges of conspiracy to produce material depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor and production, distribution and receipt of material depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor.

Jesus Israel Perez Salgado, 38, was apprehended on a Mexican federal search warrant by PGR FEVIMTRA. HSI special agents in Mexico City obtained information about Salgado and provided it to PGR.

The investigation revealed Cubero-Soto made arrangements using his cellular telephone to pick up a minor, identified as Jane Doe, from an area near her middle school to take her to a motel in Cabo Rojo for the purpose of engaging in a commercial sex act.

Richard Castle, 47, a resident of the United Kingdom, has been sentenced to serve 192 months in prison in connection with a trip he made to Ohio from his home in the United Kingdom in order to have sexual relations with a juvenile in June 2011.

Jose Gutierrez III, 21, was sentenced to 80 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack. Gutierrez will also have to pay a $5,000 fine to a known victim of the child pornography series he possessed.

Michael Fleming, 58, of New Castle, Ind., was charged by criminal complaint with one count of perjury and one count of making a materially false statement. He is the former director of the Henry County office of the Indiana Department of Child Services and a member of the New Castle Community School Corporation's school board.

Randy Charriez-Rolon was arrested by HSI special agents at his place of work in Dorado after a preliminary investigation revealed that he allegedly transported a 9-year-old boy to a park near a school in Toa Alta to engage in criminal sexual activity.

In addition to the 240-month prison sentence, the judge also ordered Peter Abraham Groce, 25, of Converse to serve a lifetime of supervised release. Groce pleaded guilty to the charges Oct. 17.

HSI special agents arrested Rafael Cordero after they received information from the PRDP Sex Crimes Division in Ponce regarding a complaint made by the mother of a 14-year-old girl concerning sexually explicit images in the minor's Facebook account, as well as messages from Cordero requesting the photographs.

Patrick R. Minga, 50, formerly of Cape Coral, attempted to induce and facilitate the travel of an individual from Brevard to Quito, Ecuador, so that the individual could engage in illicit sexual conduct with minor girls.

Kimihiko Makino, 40, pleaded guilty in June 2013 to advertising child pornography. According to the plea agreement, Makino admitted operating servers in San Francisco for a Japanese website known as 'Daio,' which advertised the sale of DVDs containing child pornography.

A search of a music school in Broward County, where Daniel Johnathan Gast worked as a teacher, resulted in the discovery of a computer belonging to Gast which, after a forensic analysis, yielded more than 95 video files depicting child pornography.

John William Harrison, 45, of Portland, Ore., pleaded guilty in July 2013 to one count of possession of child pornography.