Huber Heights man pleads guilty to child exploitation crimes involving at least 44 victims
Joe Lyons •
February 2, 2023
DAYTON, Ohio – A Huber Heights, Ohio, man pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court today to crimes related to creating hundreds of images and videos of child pornography by victimizing children as young as 8 years old over a 15-year period.
Ty Brandon Roberts, 38, pleaded guilty to producing child pornography and coercing a minor.
According to court documents, beginning in 2007, Roberts sexually abused at least one minor and communicated online with many other minors around the world to produce child pornography.
Specifically, between 2007 and 2008, Roberts sexually abused an 11to 12-year-old boy and took photos of the abuse on a Polaroid camera. Roberts eventually created digital images of the Polaroids and kept the original Polaroids in his home until law enforcement seized them in 2022.
As part of his plea, Roberts admitted to pretending to be a teenaged girl online to entice and coerce minor boys to send him sexually explicit images and videos of themselves.
The FBI has identified 44 minor victims, mostly between the ages of 11 and 14, in the child pornography Roberts created. Those 44 minors are depicted in more than 400 images and videos. Many more victims of Roberts’s child pornography remain unidentified.
Production of child pornography is a federal crime punishable by a range of 15 to 30 years in prison. Coercing a minor carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to life in prison. Congress sets the maximum statutory sentence. Sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the Court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
Kenneth L. Parker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; J. William Rivers, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cincinnati Division; and Huber Heights Police Chief Mark Lightner announced the guilty plea entered today before Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Rose. Assistant United States Attorneys Kelly K. Rossi and Dwight Keller are representing the United States in this case.