A federal judge last Tuesday sentenced 50-year-old Frank Castro of Kansas City, Kansas, to 110 months in federal prison after finding him guilty of receiving child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Prosecutors say the video came from a man in Milwaukee and only surfaced because Milwaukee investigators, chasing separate child-sex allegations, stumbled onto the file transfer. The court also ordered Castro to pay a $10,000 special assessment into a government fund that supports victims of CSAM.
Bench trial ends in conviction
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Kansas, Castro was convicted of one count of receipt of child pornography after a bench trial, meaning the judge, not a jury, weighed the evidence. In September 2020, prosecutors say, Castro exchanged social-media messages with Milwaukee resident Antonio Galicia. During those chats, Galicia offered to send a video he had made of himself sexually abusing a young child. He then used an app to transmit the file, which Castro viewed.
Milwaukee police later found evidence of that transmission while investigating Galicia for a series of other child-sex crimes, federal authorities said. Detectives flagged the material to the FBI, which picked up the trail and brought the case to federal prosecutors in Kansas.
Sentence, restitution and federal response
The judge ultimately imposed a 110-month prison term and ordered the $10,000 special assessment to the government victims fund, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser did not mince words, saying predators who molest children "inflict further trauma when they capture then share images of the abuse." The office reported that the FBI investigated the case, while Assistant U.S. Attorneys Audrey McCormick and Scott Rask handled the prosecution.
How investigators connected the dots
Local coverage notes that it was the Milwaukee investigation into Galicia that first exposed the path of the video to Castro. As officers sifted through evidence tied to Galicia’s other alleged crimes, they uncovered records showing the transmission to Kansas, which in turn kicked off the federal inquiry. HaysPost reviewed statements from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and court documents detailing the chain of messages and file transfer that linked Castro to the abuse video.
Legal context
Under federal law, receipt of child pornography is a felony under 18 U.S.C. §2252A and generally carries a prison term of between five and 20 years for offenses charged under subsection (a). Higher penalties can apply when defendants have prior qualifying convictions or other aggravating factors. Castro’s 110-month sentence, roughly nine years, sits within that statutory range. The statute and penalties are laid out in Cornell Law School.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the prosecution was brought under Project Safe Childhood, a long-running Department of Justice initiative that coordinates federal, state and local resources to target online child exploitation. Officials added that the FBI remained involved in follow-up work. Public filings do not identify the victim or victims, and prosecutors have not released additional details beyond the court documents and the office’s press release, as reported by HaysPost.
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