Alexandria Man Sentenced to 17 Years for Production of Child Pornography

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Lucas Aronson, 31, of Alexandria, was sentenced today to 204 months in prison for production of child pornography, enticing minors to engage in sexually-explicit conduct online and recording the acts. Aronson was also ordered to serve a lifetime of supervised release, register as a sex offender upon release from prison, and to pay a total of $20,000 in restitution to his victims.

Aronson pleaded guilty on August 23. According to admissions made in connection with his plea, Aronson posed as a minor girl while using video and text chat websites to chat with minor girls online. Aronson engaged in sexually explicit chats and enticed some of the minors to engage in sexually explicit activity on web camera and recorded the videos, which he maintained on a thumb drive that was found in his residence. In January 2015, Aronson was arrested after streaming a video of an adult male engaged in sexually explicit conduct with a toddler-aged female on a chat website.

Dana J. Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Leslie R. Caldwell, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Colonel Edwin C. Roessler Jr., Fairfax County Chief of Police; and Clark E. Settles, Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu and Trial Attorney Lauren Britsch of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) prosecuted the case.

This investigation was a 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 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and 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.justice.gov/psc.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.  Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 1:16-cr-138.