SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A Sacramento man pleaded guilty on Thursday to sexually exploiting minors after authorities say he coerced at least seven young girls into producing explicit content.
The United States Department of Justice says that 33-year-old Francisco Mariano Orantes of Sacramento admitted to one count of sexually exploiting a minor.
Court documents revealed that between 2023 and 2024, Orantes used Snapchat and Instagram to impersonate a teenage girl and gain his victims’ trust.
Orantes sent his victims sexually explicit images or videos of the girl he was impersonating and convinced them to produce similar content. When his victims complied, he screen recorded the conversations and downloaded the material to his devices.
He categorized the images and videos by the child’s name, age or other identifier in a folder called “Children.”
Investigators found more than 11,000 images and more than 14,000 videos of child sexual abuse material on his devices, including content showing the sexual abuse of infants or toddlers.
One victim told law enforcement she was coerced into sending additional material because Orantes found out where she went to school and threatened to tell everyone if she did not perform as instructed.
According to the Department of Justice, investigators later recovered screen recordings showing Orantes using geolocation tools to identify that minor’s address and school, and a saved text file in which he threatened to share the minor’s nude images with people at her school.
Another victim similarly reported that Orantes knew her full name and address and threatened to leak her images if she did not comply with his instructions.
In total, Orantes was found in possession of more than 11,000 images and more than 14,000 videos of child sexual abuse material on his devices, including images and videos showing the sexual abuse of infants or toddlers.
The Internet Crimes Against Children Unit of the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office conducted the investigation with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dhruv M. Sharma is prosecuting the case.
Orantes is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Daniel J. Calabretta on September 17. He faces a minimum statutory penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The program marshals federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute those who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.