Honolulu man to be sentenced for making child pornography
A Honolulu man who recruited at least four minor girls online to make sex films and was found with child pornography involving children as young as 4 years old will be sentenced in federal court today.
Starting in January 2019 and continuing until October 2021, John Michael Brito, 33, used social media applications to entice four minor girls “for the purpose of producing and attempting to produce and receiving child pornography,” according to a plea agreement Brito entered into with the U.S. Department of Justice.
He entered a guilty plea to producing child pornography and will spend between 25 and 50 years in federal prison. He will pay up to a $250,000 fine, and at least $55,000 in restitution and fines and a $100 special assessment.
After he gets out of federal prison he will be on supervised release for the rest of his life and must register as a sex offender.
His attorney, Victor J. Bakke, did not immediately reply to a Honolulu Star- Advertiser request for comment. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebecca Ann Perlmutter and Christine Olson prosecuted the case.
In luring young girls online he used the screen names “aloha_danny” and “Hidannyhi.” Brito “used, persuaded, induced and enticed” a minor victim he knew to be under 18 years of age to send him sexually explicit content that he produced into child pornography. He also asked a 13-year-old girl to create content, requesting specific lewd behavior and videos containing a lot of footage, according to a plea agreement filed Nov. 2.
Don't miss out on what's happening!
Stay in touch with top news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!
Brito, who is not originally from Hawaii, started grooming one of his minor victims when she was 12.
According to an affidavit by an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a search of Brito’s electronic devices “found images and videos of child pornography.”
“The forensic data extraction of BRITO’s cellphone recovered approximately 8,615 videos and 53,175 images and a full review of Brito’s cellphone pursuant to the search warrant is ongoing,” the agent wrote. “Not all of the videos and images recovered from Brito’s cellphone contained child pornography. Some images/videos contained adult pornography or other innocuous images/videos.”
One of the videos found by the FBI agent showed a child between 12 and 14 having sex with an adult man, and agents also found child pornography involving children under the age of 9.
