Hialeah man pleads guilty to producing videos of himself having sex with young children
During the spring of 2023, a Hialeah man with the username Dear_Road6737 conversed with others on the social media platform Reddit about engaging in sexually explicit conduct with children, federal authorities say.
After obtaining a search warrant, the FBI reviewed numerous conversations from the man’s Reddit account showing he told others that he groomed them and got pleasure from inflicting pain on children.
The FBI’s later search of his cell phone revealed that Edward Cordovez uploaded into a Reddit group chat at least eight images depicting toddler- and infant-aged children engaging in sexual intercourse, according to court records. The search also revealed videos that the man made of himself engaged in sex with young children on different occasions since May 2023.
Cordovez, 37, was charged in Miami federal court with four counts of producing material involving the sexual exploitation of minors and with distributing visual representations of the sexual abuse of minors and possessing material involving the sexual exploitation of minors.
Cordovez, represented by the federal public defender’s office, pleaded guilty to all six counts in the indictment on Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Robert Scola. He faces 30 years or more in prison at his sentencing on Feb. 18, 2025, according to court records.
On four occasions between May 2023 and June 2024, Cordovez coerced two children into having sex with him while he produced videos, according to a factual statement filed with his guilty plea.
During the search of his Hialeah home on June 6, 2024, FBI agents found a Samsung Galaxy A5 4 cellular phone inside his pocket. After he waived his Miranda rights, agents interviewed him.
“He admitted to using Reddit to have conversations about, and to upload and download images depicting, children engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” according to the statement. “The defendant also admitted to possessing on his cell phone visual depictions of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
Also, Cordovez showed the agents that he stored those images within a “password-protected phone application that resembled a calculator but was, in fact, a photo gallery,” the statement says. “Inside the application were thousands of images and videos, many of which depicted prepubescent children, toddlers, or infants engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
At the end of the interview, FBI agents arrested him. Since June, he has been held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
