Source: United States Department of Justice News
Jacksonville, Florida – United States Attorney Roger B. Handberg announces that Garrett Eric Weber (31, Green Cove Springs) has pleaded guilty to attempting to entice and use a 9-year-old child to produce videos of the child being sexually abused. Weber faces a minimum mandatory penalty of 15 years, and up to 30 years, in federal prison and a potential lifetime term of supervised release. Weber was arrested on a federal warrant by the Green Cove Springs Police Department during a traffic stop on July 5, 2021, and he has been detained since that time. His sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.
According to court documents, in 2020, Weber, using the name “BUBBLESXD_90,” uploaded an image depicting the sexual abuse of a child to a chat group on a popular social media application (app). This upload was eventually detected by law enforcement officers in Wisconsin. Further investigation by the FBI ultimately resulted in the identification of Weber. In March 2021, an undercover FBI agent, posing as the parent of a young child, engaged in online conversation with Weber using the app. After some discussion and being told that the “child” was 9 years old, Weber offered to serve as the “child’s” trainer by engaging in sexual activity with the “child.” He requested that the “parent” take an explicit photo of the “child” for him and provided specific instructions on how to accomplish it. Weber advised that he wanted the “parent” to film him as he sexually abused the “child,” and that the resulting recording “would be the best [child pornography] vid ever.” Weber sent the “parent” several videos over the internet that depicted the sexual abuse of young children to demonstrate exactly how he planned to molest the “child.”
After his arrest, Weber admitted to FBI agents that he was in fact “BUBBLESXD_90,” that he had engaged in “extremely descriptive” and “horrible” online conversations with the “child’s” parent, and that he had distributed videos of very young children being sexually abused using the internet. Weber acknowledged that the “[e]vidence is staggeringly harsh against [him]” in this case.
This case was investigated by the Green Cove Springs Police Department, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Winnebago County (Wisconsin) Sheriff’s Office, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Milwaukee and Jacksonville, with assistance from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.
This is another case brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.