NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (DC News Now) — Federal prosecutors said a former U.S. Air Force sergeant will spend 30 years in prison following his conviction for having children produce pornography.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said Elliott Velez, 38, of Suprise, Ariz. used more than 28 fake social media accounts across multiple platforms to have explicit conversations with girls under the age of 18 and had them create graphic content for him.
Among other things, Velez was accused of telling the girls to do sexually explicit acts, having them take pictures or record videos of themselves in the acts, and instructing them to send the images or footage to him. Prosecutors said a review of one social media account showed in the span of one week Velez had engaged in more than 7,000 lines of sexually graphic conversations with the girls. He recorded content on his phone to make sure that he could keep it without the girls’ knowledge.
Court document said the activity took place from summer 2021 through March 2022. Velez was an active-duty senior master sergeant with the Air Force at the time and lived in Newport News, Va.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Norfolk Child Exploitation Task Force (NCETF), with help from Homeland Security. The special task force is comprised of FBI agents and detectives from the Chesapeake Police Department, Hampton Police Division, and Newport News Police Department.
The NCETF was formed to investigate and charge individuals engaged in the exploitation of children.
