Parkville Man Pleads Guilty to Sexually Exploiting a Child to Produce Child Pornography

BALTIMORE, MD—Jeremy Guzewicz, age 28, of Parkville, Maryland, pled guilty today to sexual exploitation of a child to produce child pornography.

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge William Winter of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Office of Homeland Security Investigations; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Chief James W. Johnson of the Baltimore County Police Department; and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger.

According to his guilty plea, beginning in July 2006, Guzewicz portrayed himself on a social networking site, available on the Internet and marketed towards teenagers, as an older man with stepchildren. In fact, he is single and has no children. Guzewicz introduced himself to a 12-year-old girl living in Massachusetts and soon thereafter, instructed the girl to send him sexually explicit pictures of herself. Guzewicz called the victim many times by phone, and sent her a sexually explicit picture which he represented was of himself

Guzewicz faces a minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a child to produce child pornography, followed by supervised release up to life. Guzewicz was detained upon the filing of the original indictment on March 10, 2010.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's 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.projectsafechildhood.gov. Details about Maryland’s program are available at http://www.justice.gov/usao/md/Safe-Childhood/index.html.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked ICE, Office of Homeland Security Investigations; the FBI; the Baltimore County Police Department; and the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office for their work in this investigation and prosecution. Mr. Rosenstein commended Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Crooks, who is prosecuting the case.