The FBI arrested an L.A. County man Tuesday, accused of selling explicit images of area high school girls on Instagram .
KNX News' Emily Valdez reports prosecutors allege Alejandro Garcia Aranda, 23, of Sylmar, managed to get his hands on sexually explicit photos of local high school girls and set up an Instagram account to advertise.
The indictment against Aranda claims, under the name "valleyhoezzz818," he announced his goal of "[e]xposing all valley hoes with their @'s," targeting girls who attended schools in the San Fernando Valley.
Ciaran McEvoy, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys' Offices , said, "After receiving and confirming payment using the Instagram account, [Aranda] then allegedly sent a direct message to customers and provided a link to a zip file that contained the sexually explicit photographs of his victims."
"When the victims discovered that sexually explicit materials depicting them were being advertised and disseminated by Aranda," McEvoy continued, "they requested that he stop and remove them. He allegedly attempted to extract further additional sexually explicit material from them, including by threatening to post additional photographs."
According to a press release by the Attorney's Office , Aranda was indicted on three counts by a federal grand jury: one count of advertisement of child pornography, one count of distribution of child pornography, and one count of transmitting threatening communications with intent to extort.
If convicted, Aranda faces 15-30 years in federal prison for advertising child pornography. On the distribution charge, the mandatory minimum is five years, with a maximum sentence of 20 years. The threat charge carries a potential sentence of up to 2 years.
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