A Federal Inmate Asks: Was My Prosecution Rational?

seth_tins
Tue, 05 May 2026 19:58:12 GMT

Hello All,

I am serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison for production of child pornography. This is my story.

When I was 25 years old, I met a girl on an adult BDSM site who turned out to be a 16-year-old minor. After talking with her online for several months (and learning her true age), I agreed to meet with her in person. We met on two separate occasions, a year apart. Both times, I picked her up, drove her to a local motel, filmed us having sex, and then drove her home. All this was done with her knowledge (we'd planned it out beforehand) and enthusiastic participation. She was 16 the first time and 17 the second. After our two hookups, we parted ways amicably.

Some time later, the girl went "missing', i.e. ran away from home to live in a different state with a guy she'd met on another BDSM site. She didn't tell her mom where she was going. Because she was still a minor at the time (17½), this triggered an Amber alert and a missing person search. The feds got involved and subpoenaed her Gmail account records. There, they found her old email exchanges with me, along with screenshots I'd sent her of our encounters, which she had requested from me. They then proceeded to track me down and arrest me about 7 months later. I had no idea they were coming. I simply opened my front door one morning and my life was over, just like that. By that point the girl had already been found living in NYC with her new boyfriend and working at a sex club. She turned 18 the same month I was arrested.

I was originally charged with production and distribution of CP plus enticement of a minor. This carried a maximum sentencing exposure of life plus 50 years for a 1st time offender, which I was (yes, you're reading that right). After having raided my home and seized my electronic devices, the feds accused me of (but never charged me with) having a large collection of underage porn. I did, in fact, have such a collection and admitted it, but pointed out that underage porn was only one of many categories of porn on my computer, and did not constitute the bulk of my collection by far. Furthermore, the hard drive that contained the underage porn had suffered a mechanical failure some years prior and was inoperable at the time of my arrest (the feds tried numerous times to image it and failed). I had demonstrably made no further attempts to obtain new underage porn after my hard drive broke. And I was never accused of trying to meet any other minors besides the girl in my case. At the time of my arrest, I was working in the adult industry in LA and my sex life reflected that. I had actually moved across the country to live and work in San Fernando Valley, aka "Porn Valley".

All of the above was known by my judge at sentencing. Furthermore, there were absolutely no statements from the girl reflecting her view of the case. When asked about it, the prosecutor said she had chosen not to submit a victim's impact statement. To the best of my knowledge, she never claimed I hurt her or supported my prosecution in any way (the feds interviewed her twice but didn't turn over the transcripts). Neither did anyone else. No private citizen ever asked for me to be prosecuted or imprisoned, as far as I'm aware. I had taken a plea that dropped my charges down to CP production only, which carried a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a statutory maximum of 30 years. My advisory sentencing guidelines were astronomically high, as they are in most CP cases (42 points corresponds to life--I scored 47). The judge could have given me as little as 15, but he said he saw no grounds to vary downwards and thus gave me 30, a guideline sentence. In case you're wondering, I did not do anything to piss him off. He was very gracious and polite as he effectively consigned my life to the dustbin. No one called me a monster. Judging by the civil tone in the courtroom you'd have thought I was getting a $360 fine, not a 360-month sentence. It was just another day in the feds. I felt like the narrator in The Stranger by Camus.

There is one more detail. You know the things I mentioned doing with the girl in terms of finding her online, taking her to a motel, having sex with her, recording it, and so on? It turned out she did the exact same things with numerous other people she met off the internet. And yeah, the feds knew about that, too. Some of the other guys’ names even turned up in my paperwork. However, for some strange reason that I still struggle to understand 12 years later, they only ever charged me and one (1) other person. I guess I made it easy for them to prosecute me by recording HD videos with a camcorder, but it still blows my mind that there weren't more prosecutions related to this girl. I mean, she did a 4-man gangbang for her 16th birthday (I took no part, but I saw the pics later--as did the feds). She was sexually adventurous to put it mildly, but if I say this about her, I am "victim blaming', according to my prosecutor, and "minimizing" my crime, according to your average sex offender treatment therapist. I would counter that by pointing out that they are denying the girl's sexual agency and treating her essentially as if she were an object who could only be acted upon, not capable of acting herself, which is highly demeaning to her.

So here I sit in federal prison, typing this out on a Swintec 2410 CC typewriter (MS Word hasn't made it to the feds as of 2026). I 've already been in for over a decade, and it would appear that I'm on track to spend half my life in prison.

When they finally release me in my fifties, I'll have an additional 15 years of what’s called "supervised release" on the outside, which means I’ll be under the thumb of a probation officer and subject to numerous restrictions. Fun fact: I'm not allowed to look at adult porn while on supervision which means I’ll be pushing 70 by the time I 'm legally permitted to browse PornHub. America, fuck yeah. I 'm pretty much the ultimate example of "one and done". Anyone who'd had a ten-minute conversation with me would have seen that I was an intelligent, sensitive, and thoughtful young man, but I don't think the American criminal justice system cares about such things.

My chances of overturning my conviction are effectively nil. I’ve already been shot down on appeal. I can request executive clemency, and have. The only problem with that is no president has ever granted clemency to a sex offender. A second problem, perhaps even bigger than the first, is that I don't have an extra million dollars to donate to Trump's golf club. A third and final problem is that my name is not Matt Gaetz.

I do have one card left to play, that being deportation. As it happens, I am a naturalized US citizen who was born in a different country, under whose laws I should never have lost my original citizenship. Although I no longer have ties to that country, I hope to convince the US to deport me there (or to any other country that will accept me). Under the current administration, I think I may have a chance. I'm offering to renounce my US citizenship if they agree to deport me immediately. This is my only real shot at-having a life at this point. I have just family member left and they probably won't be around in 2039, when I'm due to be released. It 's start over from scratch in Europe or...nothing. That's pretty much where I'm at right now.

Rationalist community, I pose the following question: Was my conviction and/or sentence rational? If so, how come? If not, what should be done about it? What would a rational society do?

Thank you for reading my story, and please allow some time for a response as I am not at a facility that has access to illicit cell phones. Thus, I'll have to do this via snail mail.

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