Government Contractor Charged With Sex Trafficking and Sexually Exploiting Minors Abroad

A government contractor is charged with sexually exploiting and trafficking in children, while working overseas.

Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, made the announcement. 

Christopher Rennie Glenn, 36, of West Palm Beach, Florida is charged by superseding indictment with:  two counts of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by fraud and of a minor in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1594(c); two counts of sex trafficking by fraud and of a minor, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1591(a)(1); four counts of attempting to engage in sex trafficking by fraud and of a minor, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1594(a); one count of traveling overseas with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2423(b); one count of sexually assaulting a minor, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2243(a); and one count of possession of child pornography, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2252(a)(4)(A).  All of the charged conduct occurred outside of the United States, in either Iraq or Honduras, and largely while Glenn, a United States citizen, was working as a network system administrator contracted by the United States Department of Defense.  Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1596, 3261, and 3271, provide for extraterritorial jurisdiction in the sex trafficking and child exploitation offenses charged.  

Glenn is accused of engaging in an elaborate scheme to sexually exploit young girls in 2010 and from 2012 through 2014 in Honduras, where he had moved to work at the U.S. Army Southern Command’s Joint Task Force Bravo, in Soto Cano Air Base.  The criminal complaint filed in August of 2015 claims that Glenn, with the aid of coconspirators, fraudulently recruited young girls living in rural villages to work as housekeepers at his home.  In exchange, Glenn promised to pay a significant amount of money to the families. The government alleges that, shortly after the girls’ arrival to Glenn’s home in Honduras, he sexually assaulted the girls, or sought to “marry” the minors to engage in sexual acts with them.  Some victims claim that Glenn gave them pills that made them sleepy and dizzy.  Some pills seized by law enforcement from Glenn’s Honduras residence in March of 2014 were determined to be drugs that can be used as sedatives.  At the detention hearing, the Government further alleged that Glenn had engaged in sexual acts with a minor female from Mexico and that, in 2005, he possessed electronic images of this sexual abuse in Iraq while working as a government contract worker.  These images of child pornography were also recovered from Glenn’s residence in Honduras in 2014. 

Glenn was initially arrested in February 2014, and charged in the Southern District of Florida with national-security and espionage related violations (Case No. 14-80031-CR-KAM(s)).  In 2015, Glenn pled guilty to charges in that case and was sentenced to a ten-year term of imprisonment.  

The child exploitation charges are the culmination of a two-year long investigation led by the FBI Miami Field Office’s Violent Crimes Against Children Squad.  The case is being prosecuted by Special Prosecutions Assistant United States Attorneys Barbara A. Martinez, Olivia S. Choe, and Vanessa Singh Johannes, from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. 

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida at www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.