An Ontario attorney has been arrested in connection with producing child pornography after allegedly paying a teenage girl to send him sexually explicit images, federal officials announced Thursday.
Sagi Schwartzberg, 28, of Fontana, was arrested by the FBI after the San Bernardino County District Attorney on Wednesday dismissed its child exploitation charges against him, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Schwartzberg allegedly used the aliases “Jason D,” “drunkesq_o64” and “xocdrunkx” on social media platforms.
He had been arrested in the state case on Feb. 17, about three months after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children forwarded a tip from Kik to the Fontana Police Department. The tip from the mobile messaging app indicated that a person later identified as Schwartzberg had uploaded suspected child pornography to Kik from two locations – determined to be his residence and his law office – the previous October and November, officials said.
The FBI reviewed the videos, one of which depicts a girl who appears to be under the age of 10 being sexually assaulted, according to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint unsealed Thursday.
During a search on Feb. 17, Fontana police officers seized Schwartzberg phone, which had file folders labeled with girls’ names, one of which allegedly contained sexually explicit images and videos of a girl who is now 15 years old.
During an interview with police officers, the girl in the images said she had been solicited by Schwartzberg to send sexually explicit images via Snapchat starting in 2019, for which she received electronic gift cards, according to the affidavit.
The victim said that “Jason” asked her to meet up with him for sex, but she never agreed to. She indicated that “Jason” had also asked her to introduce him to her friends, but she claimed that she did not.
Fontana police also identified another victim — now 17 years old — who had sent photos to Schwartzberg via Snapchat when she was 16, “sometimes in response to specific instructions,” according to the affidavit. Authorities, meanwhile, have identified at least two other underage victims who sent images to Schwartzberg.
Schwartzberg is expected to be arraigned on the federal charge Thursday in United States District Court in Riverside.
The FBI is also working to identify more victims in the case. Anyone with additional information about Schwartzberg can call the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office at 310-477-6565.
The FBI and Fontana Police Department worked together as part of the Inland Regional Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which also includes the Upland, Rialto and Riverside police departments, as well as the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.