A Woodhaven man was convicted of possessing and sharing videos of children as young as 6 years old engaging in sexually explicit acts online, prosecutors announced Monday.
Following a two-week trial, Diego Guerra, 41, was found guilty on June 10 of 68 counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child. He faces up to seven years behind bars when he’s sentenced on July 30.
“This defendant partook in the vile act of sharing lewd videos of children on the internet,” said acting Queens District Attorney John M. Ryan. “These horrifying crimes should serve as reminder to all that the internet must be policed in order to prevent further instances of children being violated and degraded in the worst imaginable ways. The defendant deserves to be adequately sentenced for his role in this despicable crime.”
According to charges, on Jan. 5, 2017, law enforcement utilizing an internet software tool to link Guerra’s IP address to a series of files containing images of child pornography uploaded to ARES, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network.
Detectives determined the Guerra had shared several videos depicting children between the ages of 6 and 12 years old engaging in explicit sexual acts with other underage children as well as adult men. Some of the videos, according to Ryan, showed children as young as 6 being sexually assaulted by adult men, while others showed teenage boys between 10 and 12 engaging in lewd sexual acts.
Authorities retrieved an additional 24-minute-long video from Guerra’s account on Jan. 19, 2017. The video depicted a teenage boy performing a sexual act on a young girl whom authorities believed was between the ages of 6 and 8 years old.
After obtaining the file, police subpoenaed records pertaining to the IP address associated with the account and it was determined that Guerra was sharing the videos.
On July 27, 2017, police executed a search warrant at Guerra’s home. Once inside, authorities found Guerra, who admitted to owning a laptop and several other electronic devices that were retrieved from the residence.
A forensic exam on the laptop found that Guerra had 60 additional images of children between the ages of 2 and 12 with their genitals exposed and engaging in lewd sexual acts.
