JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville native Arin Caleb Ellis, 27, was recently sentenced to 35 years in federal prison for producing and distributing videos depicting children being sexually abused.
The Department of Justice‘s division in Florida said that when law enforcement executed its search warrant at Ellis’ home and seized his electronic devices, they recovered “at least” 1,700 photos and 700 videos showing children engaging in sexually explicit content.
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Through its investigation, the agency also learned that Ellis’s co-conspirators would provide him with IP addresses and develop a computer code to remotely hack into baby monitors, ”nanny" cameras, and other Internet-enabled devices to access the streaming content.
The Attorney’s Office said that from January 2018 to August 2022, Ellis and other members of these groups that were “dedicated to the sexual exploitation of children” worked together to find and sexually exploit minors across a variety of social media platforms.
He would also target children under a fake name, “Nova,” and pretend to be a 10-to-11-year-old girl to “gain some measure of trust.”
The forensic examiner of one of Ellis’s cellphones revealed that he used a particular app to send two videos of a child being sexually abused to a co-conspirator just hours before the FBI agents arrived at his residence.
“Ellis also threatened some of the targeted children who refused to provide him with sexually explicit materials,” the DOJ said.
The 27-year-old was arrested on Aug. 29, 2022, and has been placed in federal custody since then. Ellis pled guilty to charges of producing and distributing the videos on Feb. 28 and received his sentence on Monday.
According to the DOJ, Ellis was a medical records technician in Jacksonville.