A 50-year-old Oregon man has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for grooming a 12-year-old Sarasota girl over Snapchat and coercing her into producing child sexual abuse material, federal prosecutors announced. Aleksandr Golovchenko will also serve a lifetime term of supervised release once he leaves custody.
Golovchenko met the girl online in February 2025, and his conduct continued through April 2025, according to the 10 Tampa Bay report on the case. Federal prosecutors established that Golovchenko resided in Oregon while using Snapchat to groom, coerce, and produce child sexual abuse material involving the victim in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He used the platform to persuade, induce, entice, and coerce the girl into sexual activity, and coerced her into sexually explicit behavior specifically so he could produce a visual depiction of that conduct, per the same account.
The girl lived in Sarasota, which brought the Sarasota Police Department into a joint investigation alongside the FBI, according to WENG Radio. Local investigators worked alongside federal agents to trace Golovchenko's online activity across state lines, connecting a suspect in Oregon to a victim in Florida.
Guilty Plea and Sentencing
Golovchenko pleaded guilty on April 29, 2026, to production of child sexual abuse material and coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity, per 10 Tampa Bay's reporting. U.S. Attorney Greg Kehoe said Golovchenko was prosecuted on three counts of production of CSAM and two counts of coercion of a minor to engage in sexual activity, the station notes.
U.S. District Judge John Badalamenti handed down the sentence in Tampa: 300 months, or 25 years, behind bars. Assistant United States Attorney Courtney Derry led the federal prosecution, according to the Department of Justice.
Why the Sentence Landed at 25 Years
Federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 2251 sets a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison for production of child sexual abuse material, with a ceiling of up to 30 years per count for a first-time offense, per the Department of Justice. In addition to the 25 years in custody, Judge Badalamenti ordered lifetime supervised release once Golovchenko is freed, the agency states.
The case was prosecuted under Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative that coordinates federal, state, and local resources against internet-facilitated child sexual exploitation, according to the agency. The available account does not provide further details about other operations, arrest totals, or prosecutions in the district.
A Growing National Problem
The Golovchenko case fits into a broader pattern of online exploitation cases moving through federal courts. Nationwide, Internet Crimes Against Children task forces conducted nearly 347,000 investigations in 2025, leading to more than 17,000 arrests, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Social media platforms remain central to how these cases surface. In 2025, eight major tech platforms, including Snapchat, Meta, and TikTok, submitted more than 17 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, representing 81 percent of all CyberTipline reports that year, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Separately, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported receiving more than 50,000 sextortion reports involving children in 2025, averaging 137 reports per day. Among NCMEC's public sextortion reports in 2025 where the relationship to the victim was known, 94 percent came directly from the child victim or the victim's parent.
Part of a Pattern in Tampa Bay's Federal Courts
The Golovchenko case involved Snapchat-based coercion of a minor. This article also references an original federal grand jury indictment involving Golovchenko, a Bradenton case involving Snapchat-based coercion, and a St. Petersburg case involving CSAM and minor-enticement offenses.
