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The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas announced Tuesday the sentencing of a 33-year-old Mexican national for possession of child sexual abuse material.
Juan Francisco Meza-Chavez pleaded guilty on Sept. 5, 2023, and has been sentenced to eight years in prison, according to a new release from the USAO.
U.S. District Judge Rolando Olvera also ordered Meza-Chavez to pay $45,000 in restitution to be paid to the victims.
Meza-Chavez will also need to serve 20 years of supervised release following his prison term and register as a sex offender.
According to the release, the investigation began in May 2022 after investigators looked into the BitTorrent network, a peer-to-peer platform used to download and share files on the internet, where authorities were able to identify the IP addresses of people sharing child pornography, one of which was linked to Meza-Chavez.
A criminal complaint said the FBI utilized online investigative software and was able to download about 2,474 files of child sexual abuse material from Meza-Chavez’s IP address.
An open source search of the suspect IP revealed that the address belonged to Charter Communications Inc., the complaint said.
A subpoena for subscriber information for the suspect IP was issued which returned Meza-Chavez’s physical address.
The residence was located in Cameron County.
On Oct. 13, that same year, the FBI executed a search warrant at the residence where they found Meza-Chavez.
During the interview, Meza-Chavez confessed to downloading and viewing child sexual abuse material utilizing his LG cellphone, adding that he would subsequently delete the files after viewing them and said he hasn’t viewed any in the past two days.
Authorities then seized multiple electronic devices capable of storing the material.
“A forensic analysis of the devices resulted in the discovery of 40 videos and 11 images of child pornography,” the release said.
Meza-Chavez, who was living in the country illegally, will likely be deported after his sentence.
