On Monday, Steven Antepara, 21, of New York, N.Y., was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Antepara previously pleaded guilty to attempting to entice a minor.
Antepara used an online chat service and instant messaging application to meet and communicate with a girl in Tucson who was eleven years old. Antepara coerced the child to take and send him sexually explicit images of herself.
Antepara then threatened to post the child’s images on social media and networking sites if she failed to send him more sexually explicit photos and engage in sexually explicit video web chats over Skype with him. The defendant obtained sexually explicit images from other minor children in the same manner. He possessed over 900 images of child pornography and shared the images with others.
Antepara’s term of imprisonment will be followed by lifetime supervised release with stringent sex offender conditions, including the condition that he register as a sex offender.
The investigation in this case was conducted by the Tucson Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tucson.