DETROIT – Eight men from around the country were sentenced on Dec. 5 and Dec. 6 for participating in an international child pornography production ring.
The announcement was made by U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider of the Eastern District of Michigan, and Special Agent in Charge Timothy Slater of the FBI, Detroit Division.
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The men sentenced include:
Christian Maire, 40, Binghamton, New York, sentenced to 40 years.
Arthur Simpatico, 47, Ontario, Canada, sentenced to 38 years.
Jonathan Negroni Rodriguez, 37, West Hollywood, California, sentenced to 35 years.
Michal Figura, 36, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, sentenced to 31 ¼ years.
Odell Ortega, 37, Miami, Florida, sentenced to 37 ½ years.
Brett Jonathan Sinta, 36, Hickory, North Carolina, sentenced to 30 ½ years.
Caleb Young, 38, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, sentenced to 30 years.
Daniel Walton, 34, Saginaw, Texas, sentenced to 30 ½ years.
In addition to their prison sentences and terms of supervised release, all of the defendants were ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution to each of the identified victims, reaching a total of over $1 million.
U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy, III of the Eastern District of Michigan, imposed the sentences.
According to court records, the eight men worked together from 2012 through 2017, with other men both inside and outside of the United States, to lure juvenile girls to an unmonitored video chat website and then sexually exploit them.
The men recruited the victims from common social media platforms by pretending to be teenage boys interested in chatting with the girls in real time.
Once the victims arrived in the chatrooms, the group—all pretending to be teenagers—worked together to build trust and convince the children to engage in sexually explicit conduct on web cameras.
Group members then recorded that activity. The girls were unaware that the men were making recordings, or what they dubbed “captures,” of the sexual activity.
Through their scheme, the group successfully targeted hundreds of minors, some as young as 10-years-old.
The forensic examination of their devices recovered over 450,000 child exploitive and child pornography videos of these minors, some of whom were present for the sentencing hearing and made statements to the court.
Still other victims have not been identified. The FBI has so-far identified more than two dozen victims in the United States.
“These predators committed truly horrific crimes against innocent girls and they deserve decades in prison. Shockingly, some of these defendants have young children themselves,” said Schneider. “Parents, please speak with your children about the dangers of chatting online so we can keep all of our children safe.”