Friday, November 18, 2016

Virginia Man Sentenced to 17 Years in Prison for Production of Child Pornography



A Virginia man was sentenced today to 204 months in prison for production of child pornography, enticing minors to engage in sexually-explicit conduct online and recording the acts.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente of the Eastern District of Virginia; Colonel Edwin C. Roessler Jr., Chief of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Department; and Special Agent in Charge Clark E. Settles of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, D.C., made the announcement.

Lucas Aronson, 31, of Alexandria, pleaded guilty on Aug. 23, 2016, and was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia, who also ordered Aronson to serve a lifetime of supervised release.

According to admissions made in connection with his plea, Aronson posed as a minor girl while using video and text chat websites to chat with minor girls online.  Aronson engaged in sexually explicit chats and enticed some of the minors to engage in sexually explicit activity on web camera and recorded the videos, which he maintained on a thumb drive that was found in his residence.  In January 2015, Aronson was arrested after streaming a video of a toddler-aged female engaged in sexually explicit conduct with an adult male on a chat website.

The Fairfax County Police and HSI investigated the case.  Trial Attorney Lauren Britsch of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu of the Eastern District of Virginia prosecuted the case.

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