Michele Beckwith Acting U.S. Attorney | U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California
Louis Donald Mendonsa, a 62-year-old resident of Sacramento, has been sentenced to 24 years and four months in prison. He was involved in operating multiple dark web websites dedicated to sharing images of child sexual abuse.
The announcement was made by Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith for the Eastern District of California, Supervisory Official Antoinette T. Bacon of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Tatum King.
Court documents reveal that Mendonsa played a role in managing and maintaining four websites on the dark web from at least December 2021 until his arrest in November 2022. These sites were used for advertising, distributing, and exchanging child sexual abuse material. One site allowed members to post images and videos of children as young as infants. Mendonsa utilized internet access at a local coffee shop to advertise and distribute these illegal materials and helped others run the websites. Authorities discovered approximately 6,500 images depicting identified victims on his electronic devices.
Mendonsa entered a guilty plea in April 2024 to seven counts of distribution and one count of possession of child pornography.
The investigation was conducted by HSI with assistance from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, the Sacramento Police Department, and the High Technology Investigative Unit of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emily Sauvageau and Christina McCall for the Eastern District of California along with CEOS Trial Attorney Kaylynn Foulon handled the prosecution.
This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, an initiative launched by the Department of Justice in May 2006 aimed at combating child sexual exploitation and abuse. The project seeks to enhance efforts by federal, state, and local resources to locate offenders exploiting children via the internet while also rescuing victims.
For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.
