A Tampa man has been handed a 15-year federal prison sentence after a judge found he transported and possessed computer-generated child sexual abuse material, according to court records. U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven also ordered that the defendant, 44-year-old Bruce Raymond Robinson Jr., remain on supervised release for the rest of his life once he completes his prison term. Robinson was found guilty after a bench trial on Dec. 5, 2025.
Federal sentence follows bench-trial conviction
According to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, Robinson received 15 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for transporting and possessing child sexual abuse material. The office said the prosecution was brought under Project Safe Childhood and followed a December bench trial in which the court found the evidence sufficient to convict. Federal prosecutors framed the sentence as part of continuing efforts to target online exploitation through that initiative.
How investigators say the files came to light
Court filings show that on June 29, 2023, a video was uploaded to Robinson’s Google account. In April 2025, Google reported that file to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which then routed a CyberTip to law enforcement investigators. According to those filings, a task force officer reviewed the tip, obtained state and then federal warrants that ultimately pointed agents to Robinson, who was confronted with the evidence and confessed during interviews. The investigation was publicly discussed by FBI Tampa, which said it worked alongside the Tampa Police Department; the bureau’s statement is available in its social post linked above.
Court rejects constitutional challenge to the statutes
Robinson’s defense team moved to challenge the statute under which he was charged, raising constitutional concerns, but the federal judge denied that motion and took on a First Amendment question involving so-called morphed imagery. In a written order, the court stated, “The Court finds that ‘morphed’ child pornography is not speech protected by the First Amendment,” and relied on that conclusion to uphold the counts in the indictment. The reasoning and rulings are detailed in the court’s publicly filed orders in the Middle District of Florida.
Why the case matters beyond Tampa
Prosecutors and advocates say the decision highlights a broader national push to treat AI-generated and computer-altered child sexual abuse material as concrete, prosecutable harm rather than abstract speech. Authorities and news organizations have been calling attention to that issue in recent years. The trend has influenced state law as well: Florida’s 2026 revisions to sexual-offense statutes explicitly increase penalties and clarify that generated child sexual abuse material is covered by state law, with those changes taking effect this summer.
What comes next
Robinson’s sentence stands at the federal level unless he files an appeal; court records list the charges, the bench-trial conviction and the orders denying his pretrial motions, which outline how the case moved through the system. Local and federal agencies involved in the investigation say the conviction is part of ongoing efforts to identify and prosecute people who create, possess or distribute exploitative material online.
