A 25-year-old Lake City man will avoid prison time for possessing over 5,000 pieces of suspected child sexual abuse material following an investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies.
Ricardo Salvador Sosa Reyes appeared before District Judge Christopher Neisen in Wabasha County District Court on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, where he was given a stayed 30 month prison sentence, 90 days in jail and 10 years of supervised probation in accordance to a January 2023 plea deal. He was credited with six days for time served.
He pleaded guilty to four felony charges possessing an electronic form of pornographic work as part of the plea deal that dismissed two felony charges of possessing pornographic work involving minors.
Sosa Reyes is required to register as a predatory offender and follow all recommendations from a psychosexual evaluation. He was ordered to have no unsupervised contact with any juveniles or vulnerable adults.
According to the criminal complaint:
Discord, a social platform used to communicate via text, phone, video and file sharing, notified the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that possible child sexual abuse images had been uploaded to the platform.
The account owner, Sosa Reyes, was found to be living in Lake City.
Law enforcement found 5,076 images and 628 videos of suspected child sexual abuse material on various electronic devices found during a March 30, 2021, search warrant of his home.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an agency that works with law enforcement to help identify child sexual abuse material, found that 1,259 images and 29 video files were of known child victims.
Of the series of material that NCMEC identified, one was of a girl who was 12-years-old or younger that was found by law enforcement in Kansas City in October 2014. Another was identified in December 2013 and the child would have been approximately 5 to 9 years old during the the years she was abused.
“The crimes charged herein are not victimless crimes,” reads part of the complaint. “By possessing, downloading and uploading these files, each victim is re-victimized.”