Tag: CSAM

Years ago, when the digital landscape consisted almost entirely of dimly lit arcades at the mall, where video game machines flashed bright colors and emitted primitive robot noises, some people suspected that the adult men who frequented those places were not to be trusted around children.  Whether or not those fears were justified, nobody could have imagined that there would one day be a place in the digital world where it was absolutely certain that children utilizing that space would eventually be solicited by men for immoral purposes.  One of those places is Snapchat.  From time to time, this blog has sought to draw attention to the Snapchat predators arrested or convicted for crimes committed against children in one area of one state during one brief period of time.  What follows is a rundown of those Snapchat predators and their offenses for the last six months.      

For immediate release, February 24, 2025, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana:

Larry Goldsmith., 26, of Indianapolis, has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release after pleading guilty to transportation of a minor with intent to engage in sexual activity.

According to court documents, in 2020, Goldsmith began messaging a 14-year-old girl living in Michigan through the social media applications Spot-a-Friend and Snapchat. Goldsmith knew of the child’s age at the time yet engaged in sexually explicit conversations with her. 

At the end of August 2020, the child got into a verbal argument with her mother and expressed to Goldsmith that she wanted to run away from home. Goldsmith drove over four hours to Michigan and picked her up at a business near her home. Goldsmith was 21 years old at the time.

On the way back to Indiana, Goldsmith engaged in sexually explicit conduct with the child at a rest stop in Michigan and then transported her across state lines to a home he rented in Indianapolis.  During their time living together, Goldsmith had sex with the child numerous times and impregnated her.

After committing these offenses, Goldsmith continued his sexual abuse of minors by committing essentially the same conduct with another child in Georgia – where he drugged and raped a 13-year-old. In 2022, Goldsmith pleaded guilty to those crimes in Georgia and was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, which he is currently serving.

“Goldsmith is no longer a danger to children and families in our community,” said John E. Childress, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. “He is a manipulative, child predator who used the tools of social media to abuse a vulnerable child over and over again. I commend the outstanding work of local law enforcement agencies in Indiana and Georgia, along with the FBI, to bring the victim home safely.”

From WRTV Indianapolis, August 26, 2024:

An Indianapolis man will spend the next 44 years in federal prison after he was found guilty of exploiting a child on Snapchat, despite already being a registered sex offender and on probation.

Sonny Applegate, 27, was sentenced to 44 years in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release to follow after pleading guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of committing a felony offense while required to register as a sex offender.

According to court documents, Applegate was convicted in 2020 of possession of child pornography. His four year prison sentence then was suspended to probation.

Despite being on probation, Applegate reoffended.

Between August 1 and Sept. 12, 2022, Applegate used Snapchat to communicate with an 11-year-old from Missouri. Applegate engaged in graphically explicit sexual chat with the child and routinely demanded that they create and send him images and videos of themselves engaged in sexually explicit conduct that he directed.

During a routine probation check, the phone being used to communicate with the child was located.

“Every family should know that social media apps like Snapchat are not safe spaces for young children and are often hunting grounds for predators who seek gratification from their exploitation,” said Zachary A. Myers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana “The federal prison sentence imposed here ensures that the public will be protected from this offender for many decades to come. Other online predators should take notice that the Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, including the FBI, and our federal prosecutors, will work tirelessly to hold them accountable and make our children safer from abuse.”

From 13 WTHR, Indianapolis, October 3, 2024:

A California man has been accused raping a 12-year-old Indiana girl after they met on Snapchat.

Bernardo Revelez Tapia, 43, has been formally charged with two counts of rape, two counts of child molesting and two counts of strangulation, according to online court records.

The Greene County Sheriff’s Department said it began investigating a report of a missing 12-year-old girl on Sept. 23, 2024. The family allegedly told police the girl met an older man online and made a plan over Snapchat for him to pick her up.

Police said shortly after the report was made, the girl returned home. Investigators determined Tapia picked the girl up outside her home and took her to a Bedford, Indiana, motel. 

Tapia was charged Sept. 25. The next day, he was arrested by Indiana State Police in Elkhart, Indiana, and taken to the Lawrence County Jail. 

“An ongoing investigation is still underway for possible charges in Greene County,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement, adding that Tapia is a registered sex offender in California.

Tapia, who is from San Jose, California, will be back in court for a pretrial conference Dec. 18. His jury trial has been scheduled to start March 26, 2025.

Bedford is approximately 80 miles south of Indianapolis.

From Fox59 News, Indianapolis, August 13, 2024:

An Indianapolis man faces more than 10 felony charges after police were notified of child porn being uploaded and shared to young girls on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Jayden Edwards, 24, was charged last month in Marion County with child exploitation and possessing child porn after Indy police were given a digital tip that CSAM had been uploaded to his X Corp (Twitter) account. He is now being held on a $40,000 cash bond.

Detectives then requested all files and data associated with the account, which yielded an email and several IP addresses connected to Edwards. The files provided by X Corp also reportedly included media files uploaded by the account and messages sent to other users.

In these messages, IMPD discovered that Edwards was allegedly messaging underage girls and asking if they wanted to see any “rape or [child porn] videos” accompanied with a pizza emoji. The account then sent messages discussing having sex with the underage girls.

The account reportedly sent the victims child porn videos to help describe the sex acts he wanted to do and photos of a man believed to be Edwards himself were sent to one 13-year-old victim. Detectives also found conversations involving bestiality and incest.

Court documents detail how, upon investigating Edwards further, they found a Snapchat account linked to him named “yfan_jay.” After receiving full data for this account, police found even more child pornography as well as videos depicting children and dogs in a sexual manner.

IMPD officers found Edwards on July 16 sitting in a 2019 silver Impala along Meridian Street and detained him after confiscating a black iPhone he was using. Edwards reportedly told officers he lives with his parents in Indy and uses the email address yfan_jay2@outlook.com.

During an interview at the police station, court documents claim Edwards admitted he had an addiction to child porn and would regularly masturbate to it. He reportedly told police he used to distribute the videos on X before his account was shut down due to a violation.

“[Edwards] continued by saying he has seen child pornography ranging from the ages of babies to teenagers,” court docs read. “[Edwards] said he distributed child porn several times during chat conversations of X and Telegram and also had an unknown number of videos saved to his phone.”

Edwards was charged that same day in Marion Superior Court 32 with 10 counts of child exploitation – a level 4 felony – and one count of possession of child porn – a level 5 felony.

For immediate release, October 31, 2024, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana:

Shawn Riedesel, 29, of Burnsville, Minnesota, has been sentenced to 440 months in federal prison, followed by 25 years of supervised release, after pleading guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child. Riedesel must also pay $69,000 in restitution to his victims. Upon his release from federal prison, he must register as a sex offender wherever he lives, works, or goes to school, as required by law.

According to court documents, between December 2021 and July 2022, Shawn Riedesel enticed and coerced at least three underage girls to produce and send sexually explicit images and videos. He also met at least one child in person for sex on multiple occasions. While he was committing these crimes, Riedesel began a teacher preparation program through Teach Kentucky and stayed in a dorm room on Bellarmine University’s campus, while also living at another residence in Louisville. Riedesel was not enrolled as a student at Bellarmine University. 

In late June of 2022, a witness learned of inappropriate electronic communications between Riedesel and a 15-year-old Indiana girl over a school computer. The child told Riedesel she was fifteen, and she initially believed he was a 19-year-old boy. In fact, he was a 29-year-old man who used an end-to-end encrypted email program to communicate.

The witness used the child’s email account to continue the conversation. Riedesel indicated that he and the child had previously had sex in person, and that he would help the victim run away from home so that they could meet and engage in specific sex acts. He was concerned the victim’s parents might know what he looked like, and that he would be in trouble for having sex with a child. The witness contacted the Indiana State Police to investigate.

Investigators learned that Riedesel had crossed state lines on multiple occasions to have sex with the child, including over multiple days at an Indiana hotel, her parents’ house in Indiana while they were away, and a church. Riedesel also picked the child up from her home in Indiana and transported her across state lines to his dorm room in Louisville to have sex.

On July 2, 2022, Riedesel was arrested when he arrived to meet the child at her parents’ house. Investigators seized his iPhone and conducted court-authorized searches of the device as well as his dorm room and residence. Investigators found printed sexually explicit images of the Indiana child affixed to a wall in his dorm room, arranged in the shape of a heart.

State Police collected an additional iPhone, an iPad, and multiple computers and digital storage devices during the searches. Investigators were able to access the data contained on some of Riedesel’s devices, including thousands of sexually explicit images and videos of children obtained online, and images of Riedesel engaged in sex acts with his Indiana victim. The child later informed investigators that he forced her to watch the “huge collection” of child sexual abuse material he kept hidden on his computer, including recordings of the sexual abuse of prepubescent children and infants. While staying at a hotel to have sex with the Indiana victim, Riedesel saved a “shopping list” on his iPhone that included condoms, sex toys, a pacifier, coloring books, and crayons.

Investigators found sexually explicit conversations between Riedesel and other underage girls on his iPhone, including sexually explicit video calls with another underage girl he recorded engaged in sex acts. His iPhones also showed that he coerced and enticed a 13-year-old girl to send him images and sexually explicit videos of herself. He told her he’d like to have sex with children even younger than her, and that “they should warn kids about guys like me. Cause we turn innocent underage girls into sex toy for us using their insecurities to lure them into trusting us. Then once they trust us they will do anything sexual for us…I mean that’s what grooming is.” He further stated that, “[s]ome pedos try to hide the fact that their grooming a girl, but she only feels betrayed when she finds out. I like to be open an honest with what I’m doing . . . I’m doing these things to turn you into my sex slave.”

“Pedophiles like this would-be teacher use technology to find, groom, and exploit our children—from across the river and across the country,” said Zachary A. Myers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. “This time, investigators were able to access the digital evidence needed to identify additional victims and secure a serious federal prison sentence. However, many companies are designing their technology to make it impossible to conduct court-authorized searches—hampering our ability to rescue children and hold sexual predators accountable. Together with our law enforcement partners at the FBI and Indiana State Police, our office will continue to do all we can to secure necessary evidence and make our children safer by removing these heinous offenders from our communities.”

While the previous case makes no mention of the offender using Snapchat, it was included because it provides a startling glimpse of what families, the public and law enforcement are up against.  The mindset, motivation and determination exhibited by this individual is truly terrifying.  How does someone become so far removed from what is decent and socially acceptable and embrace a life of such utter depravity?  If it were just this one man, the mind might be able to comprehend how sometimes, in rare instances, an individual can be led so pathologically astray.  But here we have multiple predators working a limited geographical area during a brief snapshot of time.  Expanded out across all jurisdictions and multiple social media platforms over time, the scope of the problem begins to look incredibly daunting.  This is the stranger danger we were told is extremely rare.  Imagine all the damage these men have done that they’re not even being held responsible for, all the SA victims and all the CSAM images.  Then multiply that by thousands of jurisdictions over several years.  If this is not one of the most urgent problems of our time, it’s hard to think of what is.  With all due respect to the social media misinformation issue that seems to occupy so much of the media’s reporting, we’ve got a much bigger problem that deserves way more of our attention and resources than it is currently receiving.