A federal jury convicted a Canyon Country man of three counts of producing child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, according to a Department of Justice announcement Monday.
The criminal complaint against Robert Quido Stella, 50, identifies him as a former chief of a Navy SEAL intelligence unit and details how he used high-tech surveillance equipment to make child pornography involving minors. The complaint also alleges he used cryptocurrency to traffic child pornography on the dark web using a special browser.
Following his conviction Friday in Los Angeles, Stella now faces a minimum of 15 years in federal prison and a maximum of 30 years for each charge. Stella has been in custody since his arrest.
During his four-day trial, prosecutors presented the jury with evidence collected by Homeland Security agents who found “approximately 17 videos and over 100 screenshots from those videos of minor victims naked and partially undressed. Stella hid these images under multi-level digital folder structures on a hard drive bearing misleading titles such as ‘course work,’” officials said.
In May 2021, officers with the German Federal Criminal Police Office tipped off agents in Homeland Security Investigations Cyber Crimes Center about their efforts to shut down a web platform set up for trafficking CSAM.
A subsequent Homeland Security agent’s investigation uncovered Stella’s efforts to hide the CSAM on his personal computers.
“On July 15, 2021, agents found collections of CSAM on Stella’s computer and two external hard drives,” according to a DOJ news release. “Stella concealed some of the collections in digital folders structures bearing misleading titles such as ‘federal contracts’ and ‘tax returns.’”
HSI agents also recovered some of the equipment Stella used, such as a hidden camera “disguised as a USB charging block.” Stella used the hidden camera to film his minor victims in private situations, according to federal officials.
Stella is due back for sentencing in front of U.S. District Judge George H. Wu on Aug. 24.
DOJ officials said the case was made possible by Project Safe Childhood, a 2006 program aimed at crimes involving CSAM nationwide.
