A 43-year-old Lyford, Texas man initially arrested for his role in a human smuggling operation has been found guilty of possessing more than 100 images of child sexual assault material (CSAM).
Federal law enforcement agents stumbled upon the illegal visual content as they were investigating Jose Rodriguez Jr.'s phone for smuggling-related information, per Southern District of Texas U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei. The defendant has been in custody since August 2024.
Following a one-day trial on Tuesday, it only took the jury assigned to the case 15 minutes to find Rodriguez Jr. guilty of possessing CSAM.
Rodriguez's defense tried to convince the jury that a virus downloaded the illicit images onto his phone. However, a computer forensic expert suggested that the pattern of activity found in the device indicated intentional downloading.
Additional evidence presented during the trial included numerous files depicting sexual assaults of prepubescent children and the defendant's criminal history, which included a 2010 conviction for criminal attempted sexual assault to a minor victim.
Investigators also confirmed that the defendant had "over 100 user accounts on the phone linked to him and that the child pornography was downloaded on 20 separate occasions from April through August of 2024."
"The Southern District of Texas has zero tolerance for child sex offenses, much less repeat sex offenders like the defendant in this case," said Ganjei. "We are grateful to the jury for serving justice in this case."
Rodriguez Jr. is set to be sentenced on July 15 for his CSAM conviction, for which he faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000. His human smuggling conviction sentence is also pending.
The Southern District of Texas hands down some of the toughest sentences for child pornography in the country—second only to one other district, per the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Nationwide, the amount of child sex abuse material online has skyrocketed, per the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Monthly reports of CSAM doubled from about 1 million in March 2019 to 2 million a year later. From 2020 to 2021 reports of the illicit material increased by an additional 35%, USA Today reported.
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