A Florida man accused of downloading and sharing child pornography while living in Boulder in 2016 accepted a plea deal in his case Tuesday.
Boulder County Sheriff’s Office
Alejandro De Varona
Alejandro De Varona, 35, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Boulder District Court to sexual exploitation of a child – possession of 20 or more items, a Class 5 felony.
As part of the plea deal, Boulder Chief Trial Deputy Catrina Weigel said attorneys agreed De Varona will be sentenced to sex offender intensive supervised probation.
Boulder District Judge Norma Sierra told De Varona, who tuned into the hearing virtually from Florida, that the conditions of probation would constitute a “fairly restrictive agreement on your part,” but De Varona agreed to plead guilty.
De Varona will be required to register as a sex offender.
While the probation sentence means De Varona will not serve any prison time, he could still be subject to a punitive sanction like jail or work release.
De Varona is set for a sentencing hearing on April 1 after a psycho-sexual evaluation and presentence investigation.
Sierra ruled that De Varona will be allowed to remain out on bond and in Florida before the sentencing, but will have to attend his sentencing in person.
According to an arrest affidavit, in August 2016 a Boulder County Sheriff’s Office detective investigating online child pornography alerted Boulder police when he was able to download two files containing child pornography from a peer-to-peer network user connected to an IP address in Boulder.
Police were able to obtain a warrant and tracked the IP address to De Varona, and obtained another search warrant for his residence and electronics.
Boulder police conducted a forensic search of De Varona’s computer in April 2017 and found he had deleted the two files containing videos of child pornography that detectives had been able to download from his IP address in August.
Police also found 181 photos containing child pornography.
