MIAMI – A federal judge in Tampa sentenced a 40-year-old man convicted of producing and distributing child pornography to 80 years in prison, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations announced Friday.
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During an August 2013 operation involving Miami-Dade School Board Police and Miami Beach Police, authorities made an arrest and discovered six videos showing violent sexual acts. There were other cases around the country involving the same videos of a man abusing a toddler and a baby.
HSI Cyber Crimes Center began just another "John Doe child pornography producer" manhunt. A forensics sketch artist from Fairfax County Police in Virginia helped authorities to identify him. And the digital trail would take investigators back to Florida.
HSI got a warrant March 20, 2014. And what investigators learned would prompt Alysa D. Erichs, special agent in charge of HSI Miami, to refer to the child predator case as "one of the most disturbing child exploitation cases in the history" of the Miami office, HSI spokesman Nestor Yglesias said in a press release Friday.
Authorities tracked Benjamin Cuadrado as a potential suspect March 25, 2014. And Polk County Sheriff deputies arrested him at his home in Lakeland a day later. Cuadrado was first charged with two counts of sexual battery on a child under 12 years old.
While in custody, he said he used a social media account to share child porn under the name "badboy863" on Kik, an instant messaging application, police said. A forensic review of his Samsung cell phone found 250 videos and at least 4,000 pictures of child porn.
He also faced child porn federal charges, after abusing the children for the purpose of producing at least 70 porn videos between July 2012 and March 2014, authorities said. Some of the content included sadomasochistic conduct, authorities said.
"This man is a monster," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said after his arrest. "There are no other words to describe him." She also thanked federal authorities for "tenaciously following the trail that led to his arrest." Cuadrado pleaded guilty on Jan. 9 and was sentenced Friday. After the sentence, Judd said in a press release that "prison is where he belongs for the rest of his life."
Yglesias said that aside from the Miami Beach Police Department, Miami-Dade School Police and HSI investigators in Miami several other agencies were involved including the U.S. Secret Service in Miami and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
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