SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - California, Eastern), published as received.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Francisco Mariano Orantes, 33, of Sacramento, pleaded guilty today to one count of sexually exploiting a minor, U.S. Attorney Eric Grant announced.
According to court documents, between 2023 and 2024, Orantes persuaded or coerced at least seven minor female victims to produce sexually explicit images and videos. Using digital communication applications like Snapchat and Instagram on his cellphones, Orantes gained his victims’ trust by impersonating a teenage-aged girl and convinced them to trade content. Often, he sent his victims sexually explicit images or videos of the girl he was impersonating and convinced them to produce similar imagery or videos. When his victims would replicate, Orantes would screen record his conversations and download and store the content on his devices. He categorized the images and videos by the child’s name, age or other identifier, in a folder called “Children.”
One victim told law enforcement that she was coerced into sending Orantes additional material because he found out where she went to school and threatened to tell everyone at school if she did not perform as instructed. In fact, law enforcement later recovered screen recordings showing Orantes using geolocation tools to identify that minor’s address and school, and a saved text file in which he threatened to share the minor’s nude images with people at her school. Another victim similarly reported that Orantes knew her full name and address and threatened to leak her images if she did not comply with his instructions. In total, Orantes was found in possession of more than 11,000 images and more than 14,000 videos of child sexual abuse material on his devices, including images and videos showing the sexual abuse of infants or toddlers.
The Internet Crimes Against Children Unit of the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office conducted the investigation with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dhruv M. Sharma is prosecuting the case.
Orantes is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Daniel J. Calabretta on Sept. 17, 2026. Orantes faces a minimum statutory penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute those who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit Justice.gov/PSC.
