A 33-year-old Hawaii man pleaded guilty last week in a federal court in St. Louis, Mo., to sexually exploiting a 14-year-old Missouri girl, and to distributing explicit images of other minors.
Gerardo Javier Montes pleaded guilty Thursday in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, to one felony count of distribution of child pornography.
FBI agents arrested Montes on July 29, 2022, in Honolulu. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Bateman said at the time that Montes has an “extensive history involving the sexual exploitation of minor females,” and that he used online messaging boards for depression and suicide to find these girls.
Montes had been indicted two days earlier on July 27, 2022, for cyberstalking girls in Hawaii, Texas, Oklahoma, California and Missouri to produce and distribute child pornography. The Hawaii girl was 13 years old and identified in the indictment as P.R.
An anonymous online tip regarding sexual extortion led the FBI to investigate and resulted in tracing the blackmailer to Hawaii, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Missouri said Thursday in a news release.
In exchange for the guilty plea on count 1 of the three-count indictment, the government agreed not to bring any further federal prosecution on counts 2 and 3 for production, distribution, receipt or possession of child pornography and cyberstalking between December 2021 and January 2022.
As part of his plea, Montes admitted to trading child pornography with others online, including images of his former girlfriends when they were minors and other child victims whom he gave money, clothes, sex toys or electronics in exchange for nude images to girls in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado.
Montes admitted to communicating using private messages on Reddit from Dec. 6, 2021, to Jan. 14, 2022, with the 14-year-old Missouri girl, who first thought he was 21. She later learned he was then 31.
In less than six weeks, things progressed quickly.
The plea agreement lays out what happened.
He sent the Missouri girl, F.W., on Dec. 8, 2021, explicit images of a 15-year-old girl he said was his previous girlfriend.
On Dec. 17, 2021, F.W. sent him images of herself wearing a bra and one of her topless.
He asked her to show her genitals and asked if she wanted to have sex.
On Jan. 8, F.W. gave Montes her full name and directed him to her other online profile.
When on Jan. 13 she told Montes she no longer wanted to talk to him, he threatened to post images of her on Quora, Reddit and Discords in every school in the state unless she “change up that attitude REAL quick.”
On Jan. 14, he demanded she send him nude photos of herself in specified poses and to have her dog involved in sexual activity.
He then created a Reddit account, posing as a girl, and started communicating with himself on a different account in order to entice F.W. to send sexually explicit images to him.
The FBI received an anonymous tip on Jan. 14, 2022, that the 14-year-old Missouri girl was being blackmailed by Reddit user “hungobject” to send explicit pictures of herself to him, otherwise he would distribute nude photos of her on the internet. She refused, the plea agreement said.
The FBI interviewed F.W. in January and February 2022. She explained how she met Montes on Reddit and thought he was 21, but later found out he was 31.
On March 9, federal search warrants were obtained for Montes’ Reddit and Discord accounts, and law enforcement discovered a trove of messages.
In February 2021, Montes told a young user, “I literally just want a young small teen to breed and use as a living sex toy.”
In December 2021, he asked a 12-year-old girl if she wanted to see his genitals, and later asked if she would show him her nude body.
Montes could face up to 20 years in prison for the one felony count when he is sentenced Aug. 15, and a mandatory minimum of five years, the news release said.
The plea agreement allows for either party to request a sentence above or below the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range.
