Metairie Man Sentenced to 175 Months Imprisonment for Distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material

According to the court documents, after receiving a case referral based on evidence gathered in an unrelated investigation, special agents with the FBI executed a search warrant at LILLIS’S residence in March 2024. During the execution of the warrant, agents seized and searched electronic devices belonging to LILLIS that contained files depicting the sexual victimization of children and obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children, including more than 600 images and 6 videos, 1 of which was approximately 12 minutes in length, depicting the sexual victimization of children, and dozens of images and videos depicting such obscene visual representations. Among the files LILLIS searched for, downloaded, stored, and distributed, were images of newborn infants approximately less than one (1) day old at the time the files were created. The newborn infants were depicted engaging in sexually explicit conduct. These files also included images portraying sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence. LILLIS distributed the files on numerous days between January 2024 and March 11, 2024.

Agents also discovered conversations LILLIS had with other users of end-to-end encrypted messaging applications, including on or about November 19, 2023, December 20, 2023, February 5, 2024, and March 5, 2024, in which LILLIS stated he had engaged in hands-on sexual contact with multiple prepubescent minors as young as between eight and ten years old over the past two decades. During several of these conversations, LILLIS sent sexually suggestive pictures he took of minors with whom he interacted, including a prepubescent female who was approximately eight years old at the time the picture was taken, and whose picture LILLIS distributed on or about March 5, 2024.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), 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 www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

U.S. Attorney Simpson praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating this matter.  Assistant United States Attorney Jordan Ginsberg is in charge of the prosecution.