Friday, Feb. 21, 2020 | 6:50 p.m.
For several years, the Las Vegas man “groomed” the child victim, raping her and filming the acts, and then distributing the disturbing images on the darknet, according to federal authorities.
Yahoo! tipped off authorities in May 2019 that some of the images had landed in the possession of one of its users in Syria. The following month, Andres Rafael Viola, 36, was in handcuffs.
Through an agreement filed Thursday, Viola pleaded guilty to counts of sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. The plea agreement recommends Viola serve 35 years in prison, out of the 50 years maximum sentence if found guilty through a jury trial, according to U.S. District Court records.
The Argentine national faces deportation after his release, or a lifetime supervision, according to the agreement.
Yahoo! contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after it found 14 images of child pornography on its servers received by someone in Syria, according to officials. Engineers learned that Viola sent them through a Tor network — that allows anonymous communication — and that they depicted him raping a prepubescent girl.
“From the photos, it was apparent that Viola was the person taking the photos with a cellphone camera, and that the photos had been taken on various dates in multiple locations within the same home,” officials said.
Federal agents arrested Viola in his Las Vegas home on June 7, 2019, and ultimately found more than 300 images of child pornography in his electronics.
Evidence showed that he’d distributed, traded and shared the images of the sexual assaults, officials said.
