DEL RIO, Texas — A 21-year-old Eagle Pass man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for production of child pornography after investigators discovered he had secretly recorded a prepubescent family member, hacked into 144 student Snapchat accounts, and attempted to extort minors into creating child sexual abuse material, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas Justin R. Simmons announced.
Reginaldo Gonzalez Jr. was caught after Eagle Pass Police Department officers responded to an incident involving a recording device found in a store dressing room on April 17, 2025. Gonzalez, who worked as a pharmacy technician at the store, admitted to placing the device in the fitting room after his shift to record women while they were undressed. He also admitted to possessing child sexual abuse material on his cell phone.
Homeland Security Investigations agents, contacted the following day, ran Gonzalez’s phone number through the National Center for Missing Children and the Internet Crimes Against Children database and found three CyberTipline reports linked to it. Agents discovered that Gonzalez had secretly recorded a prepubescent minor family member in a bathroom using his cell phone. One video depicting the nude minor victim was 24 minutes and 37 seconds long and had been saved on Dec. 26, 2024.
The investigation uncovered a trove of child pornography on Gonzalez’s device, along with an image of a class roster with student IDs and screenshots of school emails. A folder labeled “girls” contained 31 folders with a total of 197 items, which investigators identified as belonging to several high school students. Login information for 144 Snapchat accounts belonging to students was saved on the device. Gonzalez admitted to hacking the students’ accounts to access their personal photographs and then attempting to anonymously extort them into creating child sexual abuse material.
Gonzalez was arrested on April 19, 2025, and has remained in federal custody since. He was indicted on May 14, 2025, on one count of production of child pornography and pleaded guilty on Sept. 29, 2025. U.S. District Judge Ernest Gonzalez presided over the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nallely Duarte prosecuted.
The 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. HSI investigated the case with assistance from the Eagle Pass Police Department.