St. Thomas Man Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison For Child Exploitation Offenses

St. Thomas, USVI - District Court Judge Curtis V. Gomez today sentenced Raheem T. Creque, 37, of St Thomas, to 25 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for production of child pornography, United States Attorney Ronald W. Sharpe announced. Gomez also sentenced Creque to 60 months in prison and three years of supervised release for escape from custody. Both sentences will run concurrently.

Creque was arrested on January 21, 2014 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and charged with enticing and coercing a minor to engage in sexual activity through use of a facility of interstate commerce. After his detention hearing on January 22, 2014, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ruth Miller ordered Creque held without bail, and remanded him to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. On January 23, 2014, Creque escaped from the V.I. Bureau of Corrections at the Alexander A. Farrelly Criminal Justice Complex. On January 24, 2014, Judge Gomez issued an arrest warrant for Creque, and after an aggressive, multi-agency manhunt, Creque was arrested on February 28, 2014. On July 9, 2014, he pleaded guilty to three counts of child pornography and one count of escape from custody.

According to court records, Creque came to the attention of law enforcement when a female minor contacted the V.I. Police Department (VIPD) and complained that the defendant had extorted her for sex, threatening to place nude images of her on the Internet. Creque first contacted the minor when she was 15 years old, and told her that he had a sexually explicit video of her, and that he would post it on Facebook if she did not have sex with him. The female minor begged Creque not to release the video, but he continued to threaten her until she complied with his demands. During his sexual assault of the female minor, Creque took a photo of the minor, which he used to further extort her by threatening to post it on Facebook.

Court records also reveal that searches of Creque’s cell phone and Facebook account revealed multiple nude images of other minor females, the youngest being 12, with some of the minors engaged in sexual contact with Creque. When he made his initial contact with the female minors, Creque pretended to be a teenage boy named “Carlos,” and would send images of “Carlos” to the minor victims.

This case was investigated by HSI and VIPD, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S Attorney Everard E. Potter.