Robert DiOrio

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Dakota, Robert DiOrio, 36, of Summerville, South Carolina, was sentenced on June 15, 2026, to 17.5 years in federal prison for attempted production of child pornography. U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier imposed the sentence, which also includes five years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund. DiOrio must register as a sex offender after release, and he was immediately remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. The release documents the Reddit connection. In March 2024, DiOrio started a conversation on Reddit with a person he believed was a minor. According to the office, the conversation turned sexual, he asked for nude images, and he offered to buy a bus ticket so that they could meet to have sex. He was in fact communicating with an undercover law enforcement officer. The release describes the case as part of an undercover operation designed to identify people in the community who are seeking to have sex with minors. A federal grand jury indicted DiOrio in August 2024, and he pleaded guilty on March 23, 2026. He was arrested in October 2025 at the Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Elkton, Ohio, where he was already serving a separate sentence for sexual exploitation of a child; the release does not describe that separate case as Reddit-related. The investigation involved Homeland Security Investigations, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation and several South Dakota police and sheriff's agencies. Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth E. Ebert-Webb prosecuted the case, which was also brought under Project Safe Childhood. The radio station KORN News reported the sentence and the Reddit conversation, attributing them to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The records reviewed do not say which subreddit or Reddit feature was used.