Albuquerque Man Pleads Guilty to Federal Child Pornography Charges

ALBUQUERQUE – Randy Martinez, Jr., 21, of Albuquerque, N.M., pled guilty this morning in federal court to federal child pornography offenses.  Under the terms of his plea agreement, Martinez will be sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release.  Martinez will be required to register as a sex offender when he completes his prison sentence. 

Martinez was arrested on Dec. 7, 2015, on a five-count indictment charging him with advertisement, receipt and possession of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.  According to the indictment, Martinez advertised his willingness to receive, distribute and exchange child pornography from Aug. 9, 2015 through Aug. 17, 2015, and received child pornography from Aug. 9, 2015 to Aug. 17, 2015.  The indictment also charged Martinez with possessing child pornography from Nov. 5, 2014 through Aug. 17, 2015.  The indictment charged Martinez with committing the five offenses in Bernalillo County, N.M. 

According to court filings, the investigation into this case was initiated after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received a cryptic Cybertip on Aug. 17, 2015, in which the sender reported himself for offenses involving the online sexual exploitation of children.  After the tip was forwarded to law enforcement authorities in New Mexico, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office identified Martinez as the sender of the Cybertip.  Thereafter, law enforcement authorities executed a search warrant on Martinez’s phone and found nearly 3,000 files containing child pornography on the phone.  Further investigation revealed that Martinez also possessed two online cloud storage accounts containing over 5,000 child pornography videos and images.

The search of Martinez’s phone also revealed that he was an active participant in an online messaging application community devoted to trading child pornography.  Martinez used this messaging application to receive and share child pornography with other members of the messaging community.  The continuing investigation has led to the identification of approximately 70 unique users who allegedly engaged in trading images and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of children, both in the United States and abroad.

During today’s proceedings, Martinez pled guilty to four of the five counts of the indictment charging him with receipt and possession of child pornography.  In entering the guilty plea, Martinez admitted using a messaging application on his cellular phone to receive child pornography between Aug. 9, 2015 and Aug. 17, 2015.  Martinez also admitted possessing thousands of images and videos of child pornography between Nov. 2014 and Aug. 2015.

This case was investigated by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, Albuquerque office of the FBI and the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General with assistance from the New Mexico Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, all of which are members of the New Mexico Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Mease is prosecuting the case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, 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 http://www.justice.gov/psc/.

The case also was brought as a part of the New Mexico ICAC Task Force’s mission, which is to locate, track, and capture Internet child sexual predators and Internet child pornographers in New Mexico.  There are 82 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies associated with the New Mexico ICAC Task Force, which is funded by a grant administered by the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General.  Anyone with information relating to suspected child predators and suspected child abuse is encouraged to contact federal or local law enforcement.