Man sentenced to 25 years over child porn
A San Antonio man was sentenced Monday to 25 years in federal prison without parole for producing child pornography.
The sentence is on top of the 10 years he’s already serving for a previous conviction of sexual abuse of a child in state court.
Senior U.S. District Judge David Ezra rejected a request from Armando Robledo Gonzales, 37, to run his federal sentence, for the production of porn that’s related to a 15-year-old boy, concurrent with the state sentence he’s serving for the 2011 sexual abuse of a 10year-old boy.
Robledo’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Kurt May argued that stiffer punishment wasn’t necessary because his client already faced a mandatory minimum 25 years for his federal crime. But in stacking the sentence, the judge said Robledo has a “serious history of sexual crimes with children … (and) is classified as a repeat and dangerous offender.” Ezra also ordered Robledo to serve 10 years of federal supervision.
“He developed relationships with children through social media, and that’s how he met the 15year-old that led to production of child pornography,” Ezra said. “The defendant is clearly a danger to the community, and there is a serious message that needs to be sent here.”
Robledo, who pleaded guilty in December, apologized.
“I’m not perfect,” Robledo said, describing himself as a handyman. “I’m a normal person who just made a simple mistake. … I’m willing to accept the consequences of my mistake.”
Robledo faced up to 365 months in prison, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Thompson asked the judge for a sentence closer to that.
“This is not a simple mistake,” Thompson said. “This is a pattern of years of abuse of multiple children.”
In the recent case, the abuse of the boy began when he was 12 and was discovered when the teen made an outcry at age 15.
At a news conference in front of the federal courthouse afterward, U.S. Attorney John Bash, Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI in San Antonio, and Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar spoke about a partnership targeting child predators like Robledo. The FBI-led San Antonio Child Exploitation Task Force has existed for many years, but the sheriff ’s office became a partner in recent years after retired FBI agent Jeff Allovio joined the sheriff’s office.
Since joining the task force in January 2018, Allovio has been the lead investigator in 65 cases, with 40 of those resulting in some court action like arrests and/or convictions, Salazar said.
“I’m very proud of the cooperation that led to this prosecution, and I look forward to many more prosecutions of this sort until we rid this scourge from our community,” said Bash, who has made child exploitation prosecutions a priority.
The officials said child exploitation is increasing and warned parents to monitor their children’s online activities.
“We are doing everything that we can to hunt these monsters down, who prey on our children on the internet, who befriend them, who recruit them to provide sexually… graphic videos with the goal of getting to meet them personally,” Combs said.
Added Salazar: “Evil is real. Monsters do exist in this world, unfortunately, and they look like this person that we dealt with in the courtroom today.”