ORLANDO, Fla. – U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron sentenced Charles William Mitzky, 60, of St. Cloud, to life in federal prison for producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and enticing a child to participate in sexual acts. Mitzky pled guilty on July 8, 2025.
Law enforcement began investigating Mitzky after receiving a tip in June 2024, according to court documents. It was discovered that he had been sexually exploiting children online since at least 2012. Through a series of search warrants and interviews with victims, authorities learned that Mitzky was communicating with young victims using the online persona of a 14-year-old boy named “Chuck.” He used social media platforms like Instagram and Discord to groom these children.
In order to build trust with his victims, Maitsky sent them hundreds of messages every day, including explicit images and videos of the boy he was impersonating. In return, he would perform sexual acts on his victims during video calls and request them to record and send increasingly graphic and degrading CSAM. He even tried to persuade one victim to sexually abuse the children he was babysitting. Between 2023 and 2024, Mitzky exchanged more than 50,000 messages with victims, contacted nearly 300 minors or suspected minors on Instagram and Discord, and directed them to send, receive, or produce hundreds of images and videos of CSAM. This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the St. Cloud Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Richard Varadan.
This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched by the Department of Justice in May 2006 to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood mobilizes federal, state, and local resources to discover, arrest, and prosecute those who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.
