A Green Cove Springs man was sentenced to 20 years and five months in federal prison Thursday for attempting to entice a 9-year-old to produce videos of the child being sexually abused.
Garrett Eric Weber, 32, was also ordered to serve a 12-year term of supervised release, register as a sex offender and pay $45,500 in restitution to several child victims.
Weber was arrested on a federal warrant by the Green Cove Springs Police Department during a traffic stop on July 2, 2021, and he has been detained since that time. Weber pleaded guilty on July 27, 2022.
According to court documents, in 2020, Weber, using the name “BUBBLESXD_90,” uploaded a video depicting the sexual abuse of a child to a public chat room on a popular social media application. This upload was subsequently 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 an online conversation with Weber using the same app described above.
After some discussion and being told that the “child” was a 9-year-old, Weber offered to serve as the “child’s” trainer by engaging in sexual activity with the “child.”
After his arrest on July 2, 2021, Weber admitted that he was the person behind the username “BUBBLESXD_90,” that he had engaged in online conversations with the “child”, and that he had distributed videos of very young children being sexually abused using the internet.
“Weber acknowledged that the evidence is staggeringly harsh against [him] and that what he did was ‘criminal,’” according to a press release from the Middle District of Florida’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Comments / 0