Dean Edward Cheves, Engaging in Illicit Sexual Conduct, Virginia 2022

Alexandria, VA – A former U.S. Department of State employee has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors in the Philippines.

Dean Edward Cheves, 63, served at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines from 2017 to 2021. During his tenure, Cheves used a messaging application to chat with a 15- to 16-year-old Philippine minor, whom he paid to create and send him sexually explicit images of the minor.

According to court documents, Cheves engaged in sex acts on two separate occasions with another 16-year-old Philippine minor, whom he met online in February 2021. Cheves used his government-issued cell phone to film the sex acts on at least one of those occasions.

The child sex abuse material that Cheves produced was found on the phone after it was seized from Cheves’ embassy residence in the Philippines. Cheves knew the ages of both minors at the time he engaged in the conduct.

U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr., and Senior U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton announced the sentencing after Cheves was found guilty.

The U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Office of Special Investigations investigated the case with the assistance of the DSS Regional Security Office, Homeland Security Investigations Attaché’s Office in the Philippines, and the Philippine National Police.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lauren Pomerantz Halper and Zoe Bedell for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Trial Attorney Gwendelynn Bills for the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, prosecuted the case.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

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