Juan Pedro Gobea

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Dakota, Juan Pedro Gobea, 34, of Thermal, California, was sentenced on February 9, 2026, to 15 years in federal prison for attempted production of child pornography. Chief U.S. District Judge Roberto A. Lange imposed the sentence, which the office announced on February 11, 2026. It also includes five years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund. Once released, Gobea must register as a sex offender, and he was immediately remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. The Reddit connection is documented in the official release. It states that the conviction stemmed from an undercover chat operation in March 2024, in which Gobea attempted to persuade someone he believed to be a minor to send him sexually explicit images. According to the release, he used his online Reddit account to ask the persona for nude pictures. The person he was messaging was in fact an undercover law enforcement officer posing as a minor from South Dakota, so no real child was on the other end of the exchange. A federal grand jury indicted Gobea in December 2024, and he pleaded guilty on November 3, 2025. The case was investigated by the South Dakota Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force and Homeland Security Investigations, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Ebert-Webb prosecuted it. The office said the case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood. The local broadcaster KOTA TV reported the sentence and the Reddit account detail, attributing them to federal prosecutors. The records reviewed do not say how the undercover persona first came into contact with Gobea on Reddit, which subreddit was involved, or whether Reddit supplied information to investigators.