A Hillsboro resident, 29-year-old Jorge Rosales, has been handed a 20-year federal prison sentence following his guilty plea for crimes involving sexual exploitation of a minor and cyberstalking, according to an official announcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office. The conviction stems from Rosales’s initial contact with an underage victim on the social media application Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, where he engaged in predatory behavior to solicit and later extort sexually explicit content from the child.
As part of the plea, Rosales admitted to coercing the child into sending him sexually explicit images and videos. Furthering his blackmail, he threatened to distribute this material to the child’s family and friends if his demands for more were not met. His relentless cyberstalking extended to harassing the child and their online peers through various social media accounts on platforms including TikTok and Snapchat. This sustained online stalking was detailed exhaustively in the court documents.
The investigation, led by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with support from local law enforcement both in the U.S. and abroad, culminated in the seizure of several electronic devices owned by Rosales. Searches of these devices revealed an alarming collection of child pornography, including evidence directly linked to the exploitation of the child Rosales targeted. According to the Department of Justice, the accounts he used to carry out these nefarious acts were also identified during the investigation.
This case falls under the umbrella of Project Safe Childhood, a widespread initiative led by the U.S. Attorney's Offices and the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. The program aims to tackle the increasing issue child sexual exploitation and abuse, leveraging a coalition of federal, state, and local agencies to apprehend perpetrators and rescue victims. Further information regarding Project Safe Childhood and its scope of efforts were available on the Department of Justice website.
