United States v. Lorenzo Mendez

BACKGROUND

While living with his girlfriend and her fourteen-year- old daughter, Mendez hid cameras in the eye of a stuffed animal, then placed the stuffed animal in the girl’s bedroom. Video footage recovered by police officers spanned six months in 2018 and showed the girl in various states of undress. Several videos showed her masturbating. The victim testified that when she realized that the stuffed animal had a camera in it, she threw it into the backyard because it made her feel “disgusted.” While searching Mendez’s home and car, police found several Wi-Fi enabled cameras, “wiggle eyes” similar to those in the stuffed animal, batteries for the cameras, and instructions for connecting the cameras to a Wi-Fi network.

Mendez was convicted by a jury on count one of the indictment, which charged him with attempting to violate Subsections (a) and (e) of 18 U.S.C. § 2251:

(a) Any person who employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in . . . sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct or for the purpose of transmitting a live visual depiction of such conduct, shall be punished as provided under…