On Tuesday, a Sylmar man received a 10-year sentence in federal prison for threatening those who objected to the distribution of sexually graphic photos of high school students without their consent.
The Department of Justice said the guy, Alejandro Garcia Aranda, 23, was ordered to pay a total of $45,000 in reparations to 15 victims.
According to the DOJ, the judge stressed the “cruel,” “callous,” and “monstrous” nature of the offense when imposing Aranda’s sentence.
The DOJ claims that Aranda promoted and disseminated links to the child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the social media platform Instagram.
“In April and May of 2020, Aranda used the Instagram handle ‘valleyhoezzz818’ with the self-proclaimed goal of ‘[e]xposing all valley hoes with their @’s’ to target local girls who attended schools in the San Fernando Valley,” according to DOJ.
Aranda would accept payments from customers via Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle in exchange for the CSAM that he marketed on Instagram’s social media platform.
Aranda would send a direct message to buyers with a link to a zip file that included the content, according to the Department of Justice, once Aranda had received payment.
After some time, victims came to the realization that Aranda had been advertising and spreading photographs of them that were taken without their consent.
When the victims begged Aranda to stop and erase their photos, the Department of Justice stated that Aranda “attempted to extract further additional sexually explicit material from them, including by threatening to post additional photographs.”
Tennessee Man Sentenced to 261 Years for Five Murders, Calls Himself a ‘Serial Killer’
Eventually, in July of 2024, Aranda was taken into jail by United States authorities.
During the month of May in the year 2020, Aranda admitted to willfully disseminating CSAM, which included three films that were sexually explicit and one photograph that featured children.
In addition to this, Aranda admitted that he was in possession of more than 600 photographs of CSAM.
