EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A Belleville man was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release, for exploiting young boys online for sexual images.
According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Illinois, 21-year-old Zachary R. Dennert pleaded guilty to four counts of production, distribution and transportation of child sexual abuse images.
Court documents said Dennert created social media profiles on several platforms in 2020, pretending to be a teenage girl. Using those profiles, he reached out to numerous young boys, requested explicit images and received images of child sexual abuse material from victims ages 11 to 15.
"The defendant targeted young boys on social media, gained their trust by pretending to be a young girl and exploited his victims for sexual images," U.S. Attorney Rachelle Aud Crowe said in a statement.
Investigators recovered more than 600 images of child sexual abuse from Dennert's account, court documents say.
"His sentence reflects the severity of his manipulative behavior, and I applaud the investigative agencies for their work in bringing this offender to justice," the U.S. attorney said.
Investigation into the case, brought as part of the national Project Safe Childhood initiative to end child sexual exploitation, was conducted by the U.S. Secret Service and O'Fallon Police Department with assistance from the St. Clair County State's Attorney Office.
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