A Weed, California man was sentenced to 218 months in prison
for conspiracy to produce child pornography based on his participation in a
website that was operated for the purpose of coercing and enticing minors as
young as eight years old to engage in sexually explicit conduct on web camera.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the
Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente of the
Eastern District of Virginia; and Section Chief John J. Brosnan of the FBI’s
Violent Crimes Against Children Section (VCACS) made the announcement.
Jeffery Van Dyke, 46, was charged on April 4, 2016, and
pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern
District of Virginia on March 10, 2017.
According to admissions made in connection with the plea agreement,
members of the conspiracy created false profiles on social networking sites
popular with children posing as young teenagers to lure children to two
websites they controlled. Once on the conspirators’ websites, Van Dyke admitted
that members of the conspiracy showed the children pre-recorded videos of prior
minor victims, often engaging in sexually explicit conduct, to make the new
victims think that they were chatting with another minor.
Van Dyke further admitted that conspirators used these videos
to coerce and entice children to engage in sexually explicit activity on their
own web cameras, which could be viewed live by other members without the
victim’s knowledge and which the website automatically recorded and made
available for download later. Van Dyke admitted that he linked minors to one of
the websites and chatted with them there in furtherance of the conspiracy. The
defendant also admitted that one of the websites ranked the efforts of the
members to successfully coerce and entice children to engage in sexually
explicit conduct on live web camera. Law enforcement agencies have disabled
both websites.
Weed’s sentence will be followed by 15 years of supervised
release and he was further ordered to pay $15, 215 in restitution.
VCACS special agents led the investigation with the
assistance of the FBI’s Operation Rescue Me and the FBI’s Digital Analysis and
Research Center and the Office of Victim Assistance. The South Africa Police
Service, Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offenses, Gauteng; Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre; the
Dutch Police Service Agency, KLPD; and the Australian Federal Police, Child
Protection Operations, Sydney were active partners in Operation Subterfuge, a
multinational investigation coordinated by members of the FBI’s Violent Crimes
Against Children International Task Force. Trial Attorney Lauren Britsch of the
Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and
Assistant U.S. Attorney Whitney Russell of the Eastern District of Virginia
prosecuted the case.
The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs
provided substantial assistance in this matter.
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