Koreatown Man Arrested on Federal Charges that He Coerced Girls He Met Online into Sending Him Sexually Explicit Selfies

          LOS ANGELES – Law enforcement this morning arrested a Los Angeles man on child sexual exploitation charges alleging that he met at least eight teenage girls on the internet and pressured them – sometimes by threatening suicide – into sending him sexually explicit images of themselves.

          Francisco Sanchez, 30, of Koreatown, is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon on an 11-count federal grand jury indictment in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.

          Sanchez is charged in the indictment with seven counts of production of child pornography, one count of distribution of child pornography, one count of possession of child pornography, and two counts of cyberstalking.

          According to the indictment, between January 2014 and September 2016, Sanchez, posing as a teenage boy, contacted teenage girls online, using the pseudonym “Eddie Nash” to conceal his identity. He allegedly coerced some of them into producing sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves, sometimes by threatening suicide or threatening to post compromising pictures of the girls online.

          In June 2016, Sanchez, while concealing his identity, allegedly sent a victim a text message and threatened to make her “internet famous” if she continued to ignore him. When the victim replied, “If you do that u will get arrested for child pornography,” Sanchez texted back, “so, but u will be famous” and “so be nice to me, i love u so much, i dont want to hurt u,” the indictment alleges.

          An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

          The charge of production of child pornography carries a 15-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence. The charge of distributing child pornography carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison. If convicted of all charges, Sanchez would face a statutory maximum sentence in excess of 200 years in federal prison.

          This matter was investigated by the FBI and the Los Angeles Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.

          This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Damaris Diaz of the Violent and Organized Crime Section, and Julia S. Choe of the Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes Section.