Member of International Child Exploitation Conspiracy Sentenced to 210 Months in Prison

Allan Cortez, 34, 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 April 14.

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, Cortez 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.

An estimated 1,500 minors were lured to the websites. During the investigation, known as Operation Subterfuge, the FBI identified 357 minor victims in the United States, and Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre identified 43 minor victims in Canada. The FBI’s efforts to identify victims are ongoing.