Date: 02-08-2016

Case Style: United States of America v. David Anaya Garcia

Case Number: 2:15-cr-03323-RB

Judge: RB

Court: United States District Court for the District of New Mexico (Dona Ana County)

Plaintiff's Attorney: Alexander B. Shapiro

Defendant's Attorney: Gregory Garvey - FPD

Description: Las Cruces, NM - Former Las Cruces Elementary School Janitor Pleads Guilty to Federal Child Pornography Charge

Prosecution Brought Under Project Safe Childhood

David Anaya Garcia, 32, of Las Cruces, N.M., pleaded guilty to a federal child pornography charge. At the time he committed the crime, Garcia was employed as a janitor in a Las Cruces elementary school.

Garcia was arrested in July 2015, on a criminal complaint charging him with distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography. According to the complaint, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) initiated the federal investigation leading to Garcia’s arrest in June 2015, after the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General reported that an investigation by the New Mexico Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force revealed that an IP Address subscribed to Garcia’s residential address was being used to download child pornography. The Las Cruces Police Department and HSI arrested Garcia and executed a federal search warrant at his residence on July 1, 2015.

Garcia was subsequently indicted on Sept. 16, 2015, and charged with distributing child pornography on March 26, 2015, receiving child pornography from March 2015 through April 2015, and possessing child pornography on July 1, 2015. All offenses charged in the indictment occurred in Doña Ana County, N.M.

During today’s proceedings, Garcia pled guilty to receipt and distribution of child pornography and admitted that between March 12, 2015 and April 30, 2015, he distributed child pornography through file-sharing software that allowed others to download the images and videos he saved to a shared folder. Garcia further admitted that on July 2, 2015, agents from HSI executed a search warrant on his home where they seized an HP Pavilion laptop containing five images and 88 videos depicting child pornography and a thumb-drive containing 56 images and 55 videos depicting child pornography.

At sentencing, Garcia faces a statutory mandatory minimum penalty of five years and a maximum of 20 years in federal prison followed by not less than five years of supervised release. Garcia will also be required to register as a sex offender.

This case was investigated by the Las Cruces office of HSI, the Las Cruces Police Department, the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General, the New Mexico ICAC Task Force and the New Mexico Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Shapiro of the U.S. Attorney’s Las Cruces Branch Office as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ [external link].

The case also was brought as a part of the New Mexico ICAC Task Force’s mission, which is to locate, track, and capture Internet child sexual predators and Internet child pornographers in New Mexico. There are 82 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies associated with the New Mexico ICAC Task Force, which is funded by a grant administered by the NMAGO. Anyone with information relating to suspected child predators and suspected child abuse is encouraged to contact federal or local law enforcement.

Outcome: Guilty

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