SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Jeremie Hoyt, age 42, of Davenport, New York, pled guilty today before Senior United States District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of distribution of child pornography, and one count of possession of child pornography announced United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman, Matthew Scarpino, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and New York State Police Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen.
Hoyt, who remains detained pending his sentencing scheduled for August 24, 2022, faces at least 15 years and up to 110 years imprisonment on the charges, and a fine of up to $250,000. The Court must also impose a term of supervised release of between 5 years and life, and Hoyt will be required to register as a sex offender as a result of this conviction. A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, and other factors.
As part of his guilty plea, Hoyt admitted that he used a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing visual depictions of that conduct, and that in August of 2019 he produced a sexually explicit photograph of the child, and in November 2020 he produced a sexually explicit video of the same child. Hoyt further admitted that he later distributed the sexually explicit image and video over the Internet to other users on a messaging application and that he still possessed the sexually explicit image and video on his iPad when law enforcement searched his home in April 2021.
Hoyt’s case was investigated by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Investigators of the New York State Police, Computer Crimes Unit (CCU), and the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey J. L. Brown as part of Project Safe Childhood.
Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorney’s offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), and is designed to marshal federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.