A Carpinteria man was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison Monday for receiving child pornography weeks after serving a term in state prison for child sexual exploitation crimes online, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Department of Justice spokesman Cieran McEvoy said Giovanni Gonzalez, 34, pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography in February and was sentenced this week to 135 months in federal prison.
Gonzalez received thousands of videos with child sexual abuse material within one month of being paroled from state prison, McEvoy said.
“Within days of his release from state prison for despicable acts he committed against children, this defendant returned to his deplorable ways, obtaining thousands of videos showcasing the sexual exploitation of kids,” United States Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement Monday.
Gonzalez would pose as a 14-year-old girl online and use his false identity to convince victims into sending him nude photos or videos of themselves, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said when he was arrested in 2014. He traded those images online and was found in possession of hundreds of images and videos of child pornography he obtained illegally online, the Sheriff’s Office said.
He was sentenced to state prison in 2016 and released on parole on Dec. 1, 2022, according to court records.
Gonzalez’s plea agreement included prison time for “posing as a teenage girl online and coercing at least eight minor female victims into engaging in sex acts and sending him the images, as well as for possessing and sharing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the internet,” McEvoy said.
In the same month he was released on parole, he “sought out and began receiving CSAM from sources, including one on WhatsApp, a computer software application on his mobile phone,” McEvoy added.
Gonzalez saved videos to his phone and in January 2023, after giving his phone to his parole officer, law enforcement investigators found more than 2,500 videos containing CSAM, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Several of those videos “depicted prepubescent minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct or sexual exploitation of an infant or toddler,” officials said.
The investigation was conducted by the Santa Maria Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assistance from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“Sexual exploitation of children is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in our society,” said Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI Los Angeles field office. “This case underscores the FBI’s commitment to investigate all offenders who cause harm to our children, and we will ensure these individuals no longer pose a threat to our communities.”