FORT WORTH, Texas —Pedro Jose Meza, 35, of Fort Worth, Texas, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means to serve a total of 50 years in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release, following his guilty plea to two child pornography offenses, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.
Meza has been in custody since his arrest on a related federal criminal complaint in early November 2015. He pleaded guilty in July 2016 to one count of production of child pornography and one count of distribution of child pornography.
According to the factual resume filed in the case, in June 2014 Meza knowingly did employ, use, persuade and induce a six-year-old minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of the conduct. Meza produced the image at a Fort Worth home he was living at with the minor child and her mother.
On a separate occasion in October 2015 Meza used the internet and the Kik messaging application to distribute a one minute, thirty-one second video of an adult male engaging in sexual intercourse with a prepubescent female.
Meza was approached at his work in Fort Worth, Texas by Homeland Security Investigations agents on November 5, 2015 in connection with a child pornography investigation. Meza acknowledged that he had traded child pornography using Kik messaging.
These cases were brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals, who sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/. For more information about internet safety education, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ and click on the tab “resources.”
Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aisha Saleem prosecuted the case.
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