Amelia Man Sentenced to Eight Years for Possession of Child Pornography

AMELIA – Xavier Lopez, 30, of Amelia, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in Amelia County Circuit Court following his conviction by a jury in February 2016 on 15 counts of possession of child pornography. Attorney General Mark R. Herring made the announcement after the defendant was sentenced by Amelia County Circuit Court Judge Hon. Paul W. Cella. Following his term of Imprisonment, Lopez will be required to register as a sex offender in any U.S. jurisdiction in which he lives, works, or attends school.

“Eight years in prison is a strong and entirely appropriate sentence for someone who had built such a large cache of material,” said Attorney General Herring. “Our strong relationship with the SOVA ICAC, as well as law enforcement agencies and Commonwealth’s Attorneys throughout Virginia, are key to bringing these dangerous individuals to justice and holding them accountable for the unimaginable damage they do to children.”

Evidence presented at trial showed that Lopez was identified through an undercover peer to peer investigation into the online sharing of child pornography conducted by the Bedford County Sherriff’s Office. The investigation traced Lopez to his home in Amelia County.  The Bedford and Amelia County Sherriff’s offices subsequently obtained and executed a search warrant at Lopez’s residence where they seized several computers and electronic devices. A forensic examination of those devices conducted by Attorney General Herring’s Computer Forensics Unit revealed that Lopez had saved approximately 500 images of child pornography on his laptop computer in a peer-to-peer program folder which was available for distribution over the Internet.  Further evidence showed that Lopez had saved dozens of additional images of child pornography on a tablet recovered from the residence.

This case was investigated by officers with the Bedford County Sherriff’s Office and the Amelia County Sherriff’s Office as a part of the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Assistant Attorneys General Brittany Jones and Stacey Rohrs of the Virginia Attorney General’s Office prosecuted the case on behalf of the Commonwealth, with cooperation from the Amelia County Commonwealth’s Attorney Office