Miami, Florida – A 31-year-old Miami man was sentenced yesterday in Miami federal court to 20 years in prison followed by 50 years of supervised release for distributing child pornography over the course of one year.
Gross spent a year on a social media messenger application, chatting and sharing videos and images of children being sexually abused. In the chats, Gross boasted about his sexual exploits with young girls, asked for explicit videos of young girls having sex, and sent a picture of his penis to ask if a young girl could “handle” it. During trial, he took to the witness stand and lied about his actions and signing a statement confessing to his actions, among other things, which caused an obstruction of justice enhancement to be applied at sentencing.
In addition to his 20-year prison sentence, Gross will be placed on supervised release for 50 years. A restitution hearing will be held in a few months to determine what he will have to pay the victims.
Juan Antonio Gonzalez, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Miami, announced the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck.
FBI Miami – in particular FBI Miami’s Child Exploitation Task Force -, and the Miami Dade Human Trafficking Unit investigated the case, which was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Joseph Egozi and Abbie D. Waxman.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals, who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about the Project Safe Childhood initiative and for information regarding Internet safety, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 21-cr-20532.
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