Cape Coral Man Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison For Production Of Child Pornography

Fort Myers, Florida – U.S. District Judge John E. Steele has sentenced Yaisel Rodriguez (25, Cape Coral) to 20 years in federal prison for producing child pornography. The Court also ordered him to forfeit his computer, tablet, a thumb drive, and two DVDs that were used to commit the offense. Rodriguez pleaded guilty on January 5, 2016.

According to court documents, on four separate occasions between April 2014 and January 2015, an FBI agent was able to download files depicting child pornography that Rodriguez had made available for sharing over the Internet.

On March 5, 2015, the FBI executed a search warrant at Rodriguez’s home. During the course of an interview with agents, he disclosed that he had been downloading and viewing child pornography since he was a teenager. He also told agents that he had recently ended a two-year relationship with a minor boy who lived in Ohio. Rodriguez said that he had met the boy in a chat room and the two later communicated via Skype and Facebook. Rodriguez also told the agents that he and the boy had exchanged naked photographs and videos.

Rodriguez further admitted that he had traveled to Ohio on at least three occasions to visit the boy, stayed in his home, and that one of his visits had lasted for a month.  According to Rodriguez, in the summer of 2013, the boy and his mother traveled to Cape Coral and stayed in Rodriguez’s home for two weeks. Rodriguez said that he and the boy had shared a bedroom, and that he had taken sexually explicit images of and with the minor during this stay.     

A subsequent digital forensic examination of the computer and media found in Rodriguez’s bedroom revealed that he had collected more than 120 videos depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. In addition, more than 500 images and 20 videos depicting the minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct were recovered.      

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes the Cape Coral Police Department. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Yolande G. Viacava.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  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 locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.