RENO, Nev. – A man who took pornographic photographs of a 7-year-old relative and posted them on an Internet file sharing site, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison and lifetime supervised release, following a probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with assistance from the Reno Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC).
Gregorio Evaristo Sarabia-Garcia, 31, of Sparks, was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Miranda M. Du. Sarabia-Garcia pleaded guilty June 3 to one count of production of child pornography and one count of receipt of child pornography. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Carla Higginbotham.
“The safety and well-being of our children is a top priority for the Department of Justice and our office,” said U.S. Attorney Daniel G. Bogden. “Our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively search out these sexual predators and our office will continue to aggressively prosecute these child exploitation cases to protect our community and our children.”
According to the court records, between March 27 and April 26, 2012, an investigator with the Reno ICAC Task Force conducted an online undercover operation targeting an Internet file sharing network seeking to identify individuals who were advertising, possessing and distributing child pornography in northern Nevada. The investigator determined that Sarabia-Garcia, who lived in an apartment in Sparks, had placed numerous images of child pornography on the file sharing network.
Investigators subsequently executed search warrants for several computers at Sarabia-Garcia’s apartment and found pornographic photographs of the defendant’s 7-year-old relative, as well as more than 150 additional images of child pornography which Sarabia-Garcia had downloaded from the Internet. The images depicted prepubescent minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, including some files that depicted sadistic and masochistic conduct. Sarabia-Garcia admitted to investigators he had taken the photographs of his relative with his cellular telephone and transferred them to his computer.
The charges stem from Operation Predator, a nationwide HSI initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders and child sex traffickers, and Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice effort launched in May 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
