U.S. Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of Texas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 23, 2008

LOCAL MAN SENTENCED FOR RECEIPT OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

(MCALLEN, Texas) - Jorge Vasquez, 24, of McAllen, Texas was sentenced today to 97 months for the felony offense of receiving child pornography via the Internet, United States Attorney Don DeGabrielle announced today.

U.S. District Judge R. Crane, in handing down the sentence, focused was on the fact that Vasquez was found to have received more than 4,000 images of child pornography, some of which had images of children under the age of 12 and were sadistic and violent in nature. Judge Crane additionally ordered to serve a lifetime term of supervised release and, as a condition of supervised release, that Vasquez register as sex offender. Vasquez pleaded guilty Oct. 26, 2006, to receiving child pornography and admitted to downloading thousands of images of child pornography via the Internet onto his computer.

The investigation which lead to this final conviction and sentence began in early 2005 with the receipt of information by the McAllen office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from their Cyber Crimes Center in Washington, D.C., which had traced a download of child pornography to Vasquez' home address in McAllen, Texas. Local ICE and FBI agents initiated a joint investigation and secured a search warrant for Vasquez' residence which was executed on Nov. 2, 2005. At that time, agents discovered and seized a personal computer as well as external storage media during the search. A forensic examination of the computer by ICE discovered more than 5,000 still images of child pornography.

The investigation leading to the charges was conducted by ICE agents and the FBI. The case was prosecuted by AUSA Alex Lewis, and sentencing was handled by AUSA Juan F. Alanis.