LOS ANGELES FEDERAL COURT
A Santa Barbara County man was sentenced Monday to 11 years and three months in federal prison for receiving thousands of videos containing child pornography, according to authorities.
Giovanni Gonzalez was a month into his parole from California state prison following his conviction for internet-related child sexual exploitation crimes, officials stated.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner sentenced Gonzalez, 34, of Carpinteria. The judge also ordered him to pay $24,000 in restitution.
Gonzalez pleaded guilty on Feb. 5 to one count of receipt of child pornography.
“Within days of his release from state prison for despicable acts he committed against children, this defendant returned to his deplorable ways, obtaining thousands of videos showcasing the sexual exploitation of kids,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada. “Protecting our children is central to my office’s mission and we will continue to use all available tools to those who participate in this wicked marketplace that traffics in child abuse.”
According to his plea agreement, on December 1, 2022, Gonzalez was paroled from California state prison following a sentence of more than 17 years for posing as a teenage girl online and coercing at least eight minor female victims into engaging in sex acts and sending him the images, as well as for possessing and sharing child pornography on the internet.
Later that month, Gonzalez sought out and began receiving child pornography from sources, including one on WhatsApp, a computer software application on his mobile phone.
On December 28, 2022, Gonzalez knowingly received from one source numerous files of child pornography.
Upon receiving this material on WhatsApp, Gonzalez saved it to the memory card of his mobile phone.
On January 7, 2023, Gonzalez turned over his mobile phone to his parole officer as per his search conditions.
Upon inspection, law enforcement found in Gonzalez’s telephone approximately 2,684 videos containing child pornography, of which several depicted prepubescent minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct or sexual exploitation of an infant or toddler.
The FBI and the Santa Maria Police Department investigated this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy K. Beecher of the International Narcotics, Money Laundering, and Racketeering Section prosecuted this case.