A Lorton man will spend most of the next two decades in federal prison after coercing young girls to create and send him sexually explicit content on social media.
Jose Alejandro Belmonte Cardozo, who pleaded guilty in November to one count of transporting child pornography, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison yesterday (Tuesday) by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The 31-year-old Belmonte Cardozo collected more than 1,000 images and videos of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) across five different devices, many of which were sent via Snapchat and saved locally, federal prosecutors said.
The content, which was collected over three years until Belmonte Cardozo’s arrest in May 2024, was discovered after he went through customs inspection at Dulles International Airport.
Returning to the U.S. from Colombia, Belmonte Cardozo voluntarily provided the passcodes for his two cell phones to Customs and Border Protection agents, who discovered multiple sexually explicit videos, according to an affidavit.
“When I escorted Belmonte out of Dulles, he made a spontaneous statement that he was sorry for what he had on his phone and that we had to look at ‘that stuff’ on his iPhone,” Homeland Security special agent David Shuffelton wrote.
According to federal prosecutors, Belmonte used one Snapchat account to catfish two 15-year-old girls, claiming that he was also a teenager. He then apparently recorded the sexually explicit content on his second phone, saving it to a password-protected folder.
Belmonte also convinced minors to create and send CSAM in exchange for admission to a phony group chat that he claimed to run, prosecutors said.
During an interview with federal officials, Belmonte claimed that the interactions helped him process his grandfather’s death.
“Belmonte said meeting people on Snapchat has helped him cope,” Shuffelton wrote. “He acknowledged having ‘these things’ on his phone was a ‘mistake’ and that he was ‘sorry.'”
