A Mexican citizen from Donna, Texas, will spend over eight years in prison for receiving child pornography, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Orlando Diaz-Ramirez, 33, pleaded guilty Sept. 8, 2023, after admitting he received 300 videos of child pornography from Israel Flores, 22, of Los Fresnos, Texas, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Alamdar S. Hamdani said in a news release Wednesday from McAllen.
Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane sentenced Diaz-Ramirez to eight years and one month in federal prison. During the sentencing hearing, the judge heard that Diaz-Ramirez had an additional eight gigabytes of child pornography on his Dropbox account.
The court also heard that Diaz-Ramirez was working as a choir teacher at a local middle school at the time of the crime.
Flores previously was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison.
Diaz-Ramirez and Flores also must pay $24,000 and $21,000, respectively, to the known victims. They also must register as sex offenders and serve five years on supervised release, as well as comply with requirements restricting access to children and the internet.
Diaz-Ramirez also is expected to face removal proceedings after he serves his sentence.
In October 2020, investigators identified a suspect uploading child pornography to a Dropbox account, the news release said. Authorities linked the associated IP address to a home in Donna that belonged to Diaz-Ramirez.
In April 2021, authorities executed a federal search warrant at the home and Diaz-Ramirez admitted downloading child pornography through the Kik app and uploading it to his Dropbox account, the news release said. He added that he had a USB drive with child pornography that he received from Flores.
Authorities contacted Flores at his home in Los Fresnos, and he admitted giving the USB drive to Diaz-Ramirez. He said had used his Kik account to access accounts on Mega, a cloud-based storage and file-hosting service, to obtain child pornography, the news release said. He added he then downloaded the material onto the USB drive.
A check of the USB drive found 300 videos of child pornography, including prepubescent minors younger than 12 years old engaged in sexual acts with adults, the news release said.
Diaz-Ramirez and Flores will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility, which will be determined soon.
Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexa D. Parcell prosecuted the case, which was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative the Department of Justice launched in May 2006 to fight child sexual exploitation and abuse.
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