California Man Pleads Guilty in International Child Exploitation Enterprise Case

Raymond Roy of San Juan Capistrano, Calif., yesterday became the sixth defendant to plead guilty for his involvement in a global child pornography trafficking enterprise, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida Thomas F. Kirwin and FBI Executive Assistant Director J. Stephen Tidwell announced.

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Roy was one of 14 alleged members of the enterprise who were charged in a 40-count superseding indictment on March 19, 2008. He pleaded guilty today to five counts relating to his criminal activities as a member of a group engaged in a child exploitation enterprise. The charges alleged in these counts include conspiracy to advertise, transport, ship, receive and possess child pornography; advertising child pornography; transporting child pornography; and receiving child pornography. Roy admitted today to participating over a two-year period in a technically sophisticated and well-organized criminal enterprise whose purpose was to traffic sexually abusive images of children, or child pornography, to its membership. According to Roy's guilty plea, members of the illegal organization used Internet newsgroups, which are large file-sharing networks where text, software, pictures and videos can be traded and shared, to traffic in illegal images and videos depicting pre-pubescent children, including toddlers, engaged in various sexual and sadistic acts. Group members used sophisticated encryption methods to avoid detection and traded more than 400,000 images and videos of child sexual abuse before their networks were dismantled by law enforcement. The current charges were developed after law enforcement infiltrated the group in August 2006. Roy faces a minimum prison sentence of 20 years and a maximum of life in prison in addition to statutory fines. His sentencing is scheduled for March 10, 2009. Trial for the remaining defendants is scheduled to begin on January 5, 2009, in Pensacola, Fla., before Senior U.S. District Judge Lacey A. Collier. The remaining defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit [url=http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov]http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov[/url]. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Goldberg of the Northern District of Florida and Trial Attorney LisaMarie Freitas of the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Queensland, Australia, Police Service, with the assistance of the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) Child Pornography Unit in Germany, and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in the United Kingdom. Source: U.S. Department of Justice