LOS ANGELES– A Salvadoran national from Van Nuys has been sentenced to 145 months in federal prison after being convicted of using the Internet to distribute child pornography.
Denis Aviles Salguero, 31, was sentenced on August 18 by United States District Judge Fernando M. Olguin. Following the completion of his sentence, Salguero will be on supervised release for 15 years.
Following a three-day trial in September 2013, Salguero was found guilty of 17 counts of distributing child pornography, one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography.
The evidence presented at his trial showed that Salguero traded child pornography with others, sharing images in his possession to obtain new pictures and video files.
“This defendant freely shared his child pornography collection for the purpose of obtaining additional images, which resulted in his conviction for distribution of child pornography,” said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “The demand for child pornography drives a black market industry that relies on the sexual abuse of children and causes the continued victimization of those children as the images as spread around the world via the Internet.”
The case against Salguero stemmed from him uploading more than a dozen images of child pornography to a Yahoo usergroup page. Yahoo reported the postings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which alerted law enforcement officials. Authorities executed a search warrant at Salguero’s residence on July 20, 2010 and recovered a laptop computer that showed Salguero had used email to receive and send child pornography on numerous occasions in 2009 and 2010. An examination of the laptop revealed 402 still images and 67 videos depicting child pornography, most of which involved boys between the ages of 6 and 14. Some of the images and videos were of boys being molested and raped.
The investigation in this case was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
“The sexual exploitation of innocent children is unconscionable, and together with our law enforcement partners we will exhaust every resource to ensure these predators are punished,” said Joseph Macias, special agent in charge of HSI Los Angeles. “We owe it to the young victims in these cases, who will carry the emotional and physical scars of these crimes with them for the rest of their lives.”
This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Christina T. Shay of the Violent and Organized Crime Section.