Texas Man Posed As Young Boy to Get Inappropriate Photos—Sentenced to 25 Years

An Amarillo man has been sentenced by a federal judge to 25 years in federal prison for sexual offenses against children.

Willie Gonzales, 46, was indicted by a federal grand jury for production of child pornography in December 2023. He pled guilty to the offense in April 2024.

Plea records show that in the fall of 2022, agents with Homeland Security Investigations and the Texas Department of Public Safety received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The tip led them to obtain a search warrant, The Texas Department of Public Safety executed the warrant at Gonzales' home.

According to U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton, officers found sexually explicit images of a 10-year-old girl on an iPhone owned and used by Gonzales.

He was arrested and booked into Randall county jail November 1, 2022 on a charge of child pornography.

A subsequent examination of the phone's contents showed that Gonzales had persuaded the child into sending him explicit photos and videos of herself. Authorities with Homeland Security Investigations took over the case and filed federal charges thereafter.

At his sentencing on August 9, U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk noted that Gonzales had presented himself as a 14-year-old boy on the social media app Snapchat. He used his fictive persona to convince the young girl to send him the explicit photos of herself.

Gonzales was sentenced to 300 months in the Bureau of Prisons and a lifetime of supervised release.

Homeland Security Investigations and the Texas Department of Public Safety conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Josh Frausto prosecuted the case.