Press Release
New Orleans Man Sentenced to 28 Years Imprisonment for Production of Child Pornography
For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Louisiana
Acting U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans announced that MATTHEW PERE, age 33, of New Orleans, was sentenced today after previously pleading guilty to production of images and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of children.
U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo sentenced PERE to 336 months imprisonment, followed by 10 years of supervised release. Additionally, PERE was ordered to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.
According to court documents, PERE victimized eight females between the ages of 12 and 17 years-old he met via the internet and various social media applications. During a search at PERE’S residence, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized his cellular phone and laptop computer that contained images and videos of the victims, including numerous video chat conversations between PERE and the victims in which he recorded them engaging in sexually explicit conduct. After identifying the victims, agents determined that PERE met at least one of the minors and engaged in sexual activity with her, including forcibly choking her, which PERE recorded with his laptop computer. PERE met a second victim when she was approximately fourteen years-old via a messaging application. PERE successfully encouraged her to send him sexually explicit images and videos, and she complied. According to her statement to law enforcement officials, when she refused to continue sending sexually explicit material to PERE, he threatened to send the images she had already taken to her mother if she did not take additional, increasingly graphic sexually explicit images and videos of herself and send them to him.
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.
Acting U.S. Attorney Evans praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating this matter. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jordan Ginsberg was in charge of the prosecution.
Updated October 5, 2017
Topic
Project Safe Childhood
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