Man sentenced to over eight years for child pornography
A Hot Springs man was sentenced to over eight years in federal prison Thursday on a felony charge involving child pornography, David Clay Fowlkes, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District, said in a news release.
Alejandro Scott Aurioles, 30, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Hot Springs to eight years and one month in prison without the possibility of parole followed by 10 years of supervised release on one count of accessing the internet with the intent to view child pornography.
Aurioles was indicted in March 2019 and had pleaded guilty in a related case in September 2019.
According to the probable cause affidavit, on Oct. 26, 2018, Hot Springs police Detective Mark Fallis received a Cyber Tipline report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about sexually explicit images involving a child being downloaded to a mobile phone in Hot Springs.
The images were reportedly uploaded from an email address belonging to Aurioles on Sept. 26, 2018, at 4:33 p.m. There were reportedly seven images of an unclothed body of a prepubescent female who appeared to be posing for the photos.
On Dec. 21, 2018, Aurioles was arrested on unrelated charges and brought to the police department where he was interviewed by Fallis about the images. After being read his rights, Aurioles was shown one of the images received in the Cyber Tipline report and admitted to downloading and then uploading the image, along with numerous others.
He reportedly said he would obtain the images and sell them to other people “because he needed the money.”
During a search of his two cellular
phones, thousands of child pornography images and videos of child sexual abuse were forensically recovered, the release said.
Aurioles was taken into custody Dec. 21, 2018, on seven counts involving child pornography, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He was released on Dec. 27, 2018, on a $ 25,000 bond and on April 10, 2019, the state withdrew its charges due to Aurioles being indicted on federal charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kim Harris and Ben Wulff prosecuted the case which was investigated by the FBI in addition to the HSPD. The case was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, the release said.