Tag Archives: child pornography

Grand Jury Indicts FS Employee For”Engaging in Illicit Sexual Conduct” in the Philippines

August 5, 2021 By in Court Cases, Diplomatic Security, Foreign Service, Hall of Shame, Realities of the FS, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

 

Via USDOJ:
U.S. Foreign Service Member Indicted for Engaging in Illicit Sexual Conduct in the Philippines and Possession of Child Pornography

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia returned an indictment today charging a member of the U.S. Foreign Service with engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and possession of child pornography.

According to the indictment and court documents, Dean Cheves, 61, was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service serving at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines between September 2020 and February 2021. While in the Philippines, Cheves allegedly met a 16-year-old online. Court documents further detail that Cheves allegedly engaged in sexual activity with the minor on two occasions, knowing the minor’s age, and produced cell phone videos of himself engaging in the sex acts each time. The videos were found on Cheves’s devices seized from his embassy residence while in the Philippines. Between February 2021 and March 2021, he also allegedly possessed child pornography.

Cheves is charged with one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and one count of possessing child pornography in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States or on lands owned or leased by the United States. Cheves previously made his initial court appearance on July 6 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan D. Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of up to 30 years in prison on count one, and up to 10 years in prison on count two. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Acting U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh for the Eastern District of Virginia made the announcement and Assistant Director for Domestic Operations Mark Sullo of the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service made the announcement.

The State Department, Diplomatic Security Service, is investigating the case.

Trial Attorney Gwendelynn Bills of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Pomerantz Halper of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia are prosecuting the case.

This case was 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 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

An indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

We have not been able to locate Cheves’s congress.gov records. The DOJ statement describes him as a”U.S. Foreign Service Member.”  An archived 2007-2017 version of DipNote noted that he was a Foreign Service Officer and new media strategist with the IIP Office of Innovative Engagement (OIE). A June 2019 issue of State Magazine (PDF) includes a notation that he was the Director of Global Publishing Solutions (GPS) in Manila. GPS, an office under the Bureau of Administration provides design, print, and copier management services to the State Department domestically and overseas. In addition to WashDC, GPS has offices in Manila and Vienna.
The government’s motion filed on July 2 originally requested that records be sealed, noting that “Premature disclosure of the charges against the defendant would jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation threatening our ability to locate and arrest the defendant. The defendant has ties to the Philippines, where his wife and daughter reside, and to California.”
Cheves was arrested on July 6, 2021 in Alexandria, VA. His offense was  listed as “18 U.S.C § 2423(c): Illicit Sexual Conduct in a Foreign Place.”

###

Ex-State/FSI Employee Gets 26 Years in Prison for Child Pornography Production

October 22, 2018 By in Career Employees, Court Cases, Hall of Shame, State Department Tags: , , ,

Last July, we blogged briefly about State/FSI’s digital media administrator who pleaded guilty of child pornography production. On Friday, USDOJ announced that  Skydance MacMahon, 45, was sentenced to 26 years in prison for production of child pornography. Excerpt below:

Former State Department Employee Sentenced for Producing Child Pornography

An Alexandria man was sentenced today to 26 years in prison for production of child pornography.

According to court documents, over at least a two year period, Skydance MacMahon, 45, conspired with an adult in Canada to produce over a thousand sexually explicit images and videos of minor children in Canada. These images and videos were produced at the direction of MacMahon using Skype and hidden cameras as well as overt recording. MacMahon distributed these image and video files to other users and consumers of child pornography by providing access to the files on his cloud storage services and also by directly sending the files to other users.  In addition to the child pornography images and videos MacMahon himself created, he also received and possessed thousands of images and videos of child pornography.

During the time he committed these offenses, MacMahon was a Digital Media Administrator at the Foreign Services Institute of the U.S. Department of State in Arlington.

This case was 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 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

This is a case that originated in Ohio when local police interviewed of an individual who admitted to sexually assaulting a five year old minor victim and producing pornographic images. That individual’s phone led to Dropbox links, which then led to a State Department IP address. The Affidavit executed in support of this criminal case notes that MacMahon, a GS-14 employee also used his USG-issued Iphone7 in the conduct of this crime. Excerpt below from the FBI agent’s affidavit:

9. The reponse from Dropbox included, in part, information pertaining to the kvlesil007@protonmail.com User ID: 663651981. This paid account was created on April 15, 2017. A usemame of “Kyle Silvyr” was provided by the registrant. A recurring payment of 99.99 was established using a Mastercard Debit card (521992XXXXXX0894). Multiple IP addresses used for authentification were also provided (IP address 2601:140:8000:61af:2d75:7fef:f243:6dfd on 08/09/2017 at 13:18:19 GMT; IP address 12.28.184.116 on 09/14/2017 at 18:24:55 GMT).

10. An open source search identified IP address 12.28.184.116 as being associated with the US Department of State , 4020 Arlington Blvd, Arlington VA.

13. Database queries identified J.M. as an individual associated with the Menokin Drive, Alexandria, VA address. An open source search located a social networking profile associated with J.M. that contains publicly viewable images of the account holder who visually matches the likeness of J.M.’s Virginia driver’s license photograph. Additional publicly viewable photographs on J.M.’s Facebook profile include those of a Caucasian male identified as “SKYDANCE MACMAHON”. SKYDANCE MACMAHON visually matches the individual appearing in the two (2) non-pornographic images in the material in the kvlesil007@protonmail.com User ID 663651981 Dropbox.com account.

15. An open source search identified a Linkedln.com profile for SKYDANCE MACMAHON who self-identified as a Digital Media Administrator at the Foreign Services Institute (which is associated with the Department of State) in Arlington, VA, and a 1995 graduate of James Madison University. Database queries fully identified SKYDANCE MACMAHON. SKYDANCE MACMAHON’s Virginia driver’s license photograph visually matches the likeness of the male depicted in the images contained in the kvlesil007@Drotonmail.com User ID 663651981 Dropbox.com account and the SKYDANCE MACMAHON Facebook account.

16. On March 16,2018, an administrative subpoena to Kik for usemame kylesilOOT yielded a confirmed email address associated with the account as kvlesil007@protonmail.com. Review of the IP logs provided by Kik yielded a mixture of the IP address (12.28.184.116) resolving to the Department of State facility, Verizon Wireless IP addresses, and a Comcast Communications IP address (73.87.155.249) which resolves to the same address in the 2400 block of Menokin Drive, Alexandria VA 22302, as recently as of March 15, 2018. The Menokin address is the address of J.M., who investigation has revealed is an associate and girlfnend of SKYDANCE MACMAHON.

19. On March 15, 2018, Department of State, Office of Inspector General (OIG) was contacted regarding the employment of SKYDANCE MACMAHON. OIG confirmed SKYDANCE MACMAHON was currently employed as a Federal Grade 14 employee at the US State Department, as a Digital Media Administrator at the Foreign Services Institute in Arlington, VA.

22. SKYDANCE MACMAHON advised that minutes prior to the investigators arriving at his work, he received a telephone call from his wife telling him the FBI/police were at their daughter’s school and they asked that she come over the to the school to talk. Upon hanging up the phone with his wife, SKYDANCE MACMAHON deleted items off of his Iphone 7 cellular telephone, such as the applications “kik”, “Wire”, “Dropbox”, “Box” and inappropriate photographs that consisted of child pornography. SKYDANCE MACMAHON’s Iphone 7 was his Department of State issued cellular telephone that he used to communicate with K.C., and other individuals using apps such as Kik and Dropbox.

The case is USA v. Macmahon; Case Number: 1:18-mj-00218-IDD. Warning, abhorrent and horrifying details.

#