A 44-year-old cruise passenger was ordered to remain in custody pending trial after federal agents say they found AI-generated child sexual abuse material on his phone and computer when he disembarked at Port Everglades. Justin Lee Cox now faces charges related to possession and transportation of child sexual abuse material, and he is being held at the Broward Main Jail as of Wednesday.
According to Cruise Law News, Customs and Border Protection officers selected Cox for secondary inspection after he left his cruise ship on October 30. A search of his devices allegedly turned up eight videos and 54 images of child sexual abuse material, including an AI-generated video depicting a teenager being raped and two apparently real images of pre-teen girls, the outlet reports. As reported by WPLG Local 10, Cox is an Anchorage resident and admitted, per the criminal complaint, to creating the videos using photos of real girls.
Cox initially told investigators he had no images or videos of minors on his device, according to Cruise Law News, before later stating that if he did have such material, it was with the parents' permission. A federal judge has since ordered him held without bail, with his next hearing scheduled for Monday, according to WPLG Local 10.
Confusion Over Which Ship Cox Was Sailing On
Court documents identified the vessel Cox disembarked from as the “Carnival Princess,” a ship name that does not appear to exist, per the same report. Carnival Corporation owns Princess Cruises, but no ship carries that exact combined name. Four ships arrived at Port Everglades on October 30 — the Caribbean Princess, Celebrity Silhouette, Nieuw Amsterdam, and Disney Dream — and the outlet notes the Caribbean Princess's itinerary matches a sailing from the Bahamas, making it the likely vessel, though the Disney Dream also sailed from the Bahamas and does not match the “Carnival Princess” name either.
A Second Port Everglades Case 20 Days Earlier
Cox's arrest comes 20 days after another Port Everglades case involving a cruise passenger. John Mario Galvin, a 41-year-old Philadelphia man traveling on the Celebrity Reflection, was arrested on October 10 and is now facing federal criminal charges, the same outlet reported. That case allegedly included images and videos of infants and toddlers.
In the Galvin case, a federal complaint said CBP agents found more than 90 photos and videos showing boy and girl children being sexually abused, per Cruise Law News. The outlet also reported that CBP said it had received nine CyberTips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tied to Galvin's phone number.
Why Cases Like This Rarely Show Up in Official Crime Data
Neither case is likely to appear in the federal cruise crime statistics the Department of Transportation publishes each quarter. Cruise lines are required to report only a narrow set of crimes, and that reporting does not include possession of child sexual abuse material, video voyeurism, or drug smuggling, according to Cruise Law News's reporting on the requirements. Under 46 U.S.C. § 3507, the statute governing that reporting, data must be updated no less than quarterly, aggregated by cruise line, and broken down by whether a crime was committed by a passenger or crew member — but the law's scope stops short of covering CSAM offenses.
That gap means the Department of Transportation's published figures likely understate the scale of the problem. The agency's most recent quarterly report counted 50 crimes across all cruise lines in the second quarter of 2026, with Carnival Cruise Line leading at 20. Sexual crimes were the most common category in that same report, with 44 incidents logged — 25 classified as sexual assault-rape and 19 as sexual assault — while the report noted that the data reflects the quarter crimes were reported to the FBI, not necessarily when they occurred. Through the first six months of 2026, 93 crimes had been reported, putting the year on pace for 186, per the outlet's analysis.
Cruise Law News has also reported, in its own account, that roughly seven other cruise passengers were arrested and are being prosecuted for CSAM-related offenses over the preceding year, and that around 309 cruise-ship crew members were deported over the preceding two years on allegations of possessing CSAM.
