Josue Eduardo Cota, Child Pornography, Arizona 2019

Former Corrections Officer Sentenced to 60 Years in Prison for Producing and Distributing Child Pornography

TUCSON, Ariz. – Yesterday, Josue Eduardo Cota, 33, of Douglas, Ariz., was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Marquez to serve 720 months in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release with stringent sex offender conditions, including registering as a sex offender.

Cota, a former corrections officer in Douglas, was found to have produced sexually explicit videos of multiple children and distributed them online. The videos were discovered by Homeland Security Investigations in February 2017 while reviewing evidence from a child exploitation case in Canada.

Agents tracked the distribution of the videos to a person in Douglas, Ariz., and determined that Cota had been producing and distributing the videos. On Nov. 30, 2017, Cota pleaded guilty to eight counts of production of child pornography.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona. The initiative marshals 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.

The investigation in this case was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, Douglas Office. The prosecution was handled by Carin C. Duryee, District of Arizona, Tucson.

Cota’s sentence was aggravated by the facts that he sexually abused very young children and had engaged in a pattern of sexual exploitation of minors, which he shared with others through distribution of the videos.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/douglas-man-sentenced-60-years-prison-production-and-distribution