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Ramon Zelaya, 36, also “used Facebook to conspire with an individual in the Dominican Republic to sexually abuse the individual’s minor child, create images of that abuse and send the images to Zelaya, who then distributed the images among various Facebook accounts he controlled,” U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
Zelaya, “representing himself as a teenaged boy, used Instagram communications to persuade a child to send him a revealing photograph,” Carpenito said. “He then threatened to reveal that photograph as a means of coercing the child into sending him sexually explicit images.
“Zelaya subsequently distributed the images via Facebook.”
Special Department of Homeland Security agents arrested Zelaya last year, after which his case was presented to the grand jury that returned the indictment in U.S. District Court.
It charges Zelaya with conspiring to produce and distribute images of child sexual abuse, as well as producing, distributing, receiving, and possessing them.
He remained in federal custody pending further court action.
Carpenito thanked Union City and Bayonne police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic, for their assistance in the Homeland Security investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah A. Sulkowski of Carpenito’s Cybercrime Unit in Newark is handling the case.
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