On February 11, a federal jury convicted Earl Richard Clouser, 55, of Burnham, Pennsylvania, for attempting to produce child sexual abuse material with a 15-year-old teenager in Cuba.
According to the United States Attorney’s Officethis is a case that involved months of online contacts and a trip to Havana to exploit the victim in person.
Authorities say Clouser maintained explicit sexual communications with the teenager for months, requesting videos and photos despite knowing her age, and sending her electronic payments in exchange.
In September 2025, he traveled from the United States to Havana to meet her, where the minor spent the night in a rental apartment.
Upon returning through the Miami airport on September 19, Customs and Border Protection agents discovered evidence and communications on three electronic devices he was carrying.
He was immediately arrested, the Prosecutor’s Office added in its statement. U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones noted that “this defendant targeted a 15-year-old girl, ordered her to create sexually explicit material, and then traveled abroad to exploit her in person.”
“The fact that the victim lived in another country did not put her beyond the reach of American law,” he said.
Clouser was found guilty of attempted “production of visual representations” involving the sexual exploitation of a minor, a crime that carries up to 30 years in federal prison, with a mandatory minimum of 15 years. The investigation was led by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Miami.
The case of a former councilor
In April 2025, upon his return from Cuba, former New York City Councilman Daniel James Halloran, 54, He was charged with possession and transfer of child pornography after discovering videos of minors on his mobile phone during a secondary inspection at Miami International Airport.
Halloran arrived in the United States on March 29 on a flight from Camagüey, and was subjected to screening before boarding his connection to New York.
Agents found a hidden album with videos of child pornography that included children, although it was not revealed whether Cubans were involved. He was immediately arrested and appeared before a judge on April 14, according to the Southern District of Florida Attorney’s Office.
Both cases are framed in Project Safe Childhood (Project Safe Childhood), an initiative of the Department of Justice launched in 2006 to combat online child exploitation and rescue victims.
