John Albertson sentenced to prison for sex crimes against children

WASHINGTON – A man has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison after attempting to arrange a meeting with another person online with the goal of sexually abusing her 8-year-old daughter, but he didn’t know he was actually talking to an undercover police officer working with D.C. police.

According to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, 33-year-old John Albertson was sentenced to 13 years in prison on Friday for sending an undercover FBI agent videos of adults abusing young girls. He sent those videos while he was part of an encrypted social media messaging group to find a way to create his own videos so he could “have fun and make xxx money.”

According to court documents, investigators became aware of Albertson on August 9, 2023, when he joined the chat where members were sharing images of sexual abuse. He shared images in the group and sent them to an undercover FBI agent working with the Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force.

A day later, Albertson sent the undercover agent a direct message that included an invitation to another group dealing with child pornography. The two continued to talk, and Albertson attempted to meet the agent and her alleged 8-year-old daughter so he could record her abuse and later sell the images.

Two weeks later, Albertson was arrested in Hebron, a suburb of Cincinnati, Kentucky. He was transported to the Washington, D.C. area, where a grand jury indicted him.

This was not Albertson’s first run-in with the law. Prosecutors argued at his sentencing that he had engaged in “more violent, disturbing and dangerous behavior” over the past decade, citing a “violent altercation” with police in 2017 and an incident in 2021 in which he committed a sexual act in front of a child.

In November 2023, Albertson finally pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography. In addition to his prison sentence, a judge sentenced him to 15 years’ probation and ordered him to pay $18,000 to the victims depicted in the child pornography.

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