VIRGINIA
A federal judge sentenced a member of an international child exploitation conspiracy to 21 years in prison for luring children to a website he controlled so that he could have them perform sexually explicit acts, according to officials.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III of Virginia sentenced Brian K. Hendrix, 42, of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee and ordered him to serve a 10 year supervised release, officials said.
Hendrix will also be required to register as a sex offender.
In January, officials said Hendrix was convicted on child pornography charges. The investigation, Operation Subterfuge, identified more than 300 minor victims in the United States and an estimated 1,600 minor victims were lured to the websites, according to authorities.
Children as young as eight years old were enticed to engage in sexually explicit conduct on web camera, officials said.
According to evidence presented at trial, Hendrix’s co-conspirators created false profiles on social networking sites, such as YouTube, posing as young teenagers to lure children to the websites they controlled.
Once children were on the conspirators’ websites, the conspirators, including Hendrix, showed the children pre-recorded videos of prior minor victims, often engaging in sexually explicit conduct, to make the new victims think that they were chatting with another minor.
Using these videos, Hendrix and co-conspirators coerced and enticed children to engage in sexually explicit activity on their own web cameras, which the website automatically recorded.
Conspirators earned points based on their contribution to the success of website objectives, which allowed them access to the sexually exploitative videos of children.
Several of these sexually exploitative videos were found on digital devices belonging to Hendrix. Law enforcement agencies have disabled both websites.