MIAMI – When Bryan Deneumostier was indicted back in June, the charges against him included violations of 18 USC §2257, making his case one of the very few instances in which a defendant has been charged with violations under the federal record-keeping law.
Yesterday, Deneumostier entered into a plea agreement with U.S. Attorney’s Qffice for the Southern District of Florida and the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Department of Justice. Under the agreement, he agreed to plea guilty to two counts of prohibited interception and disclosure of oral communications. In exchange for this guilty plea, the prosecuting offices agreed to drop the three 2257-related offenses. (Those counts of the indictment will be dropped after Deneumostier is sentenced.)
According to the factual proffer entered Thursday, Deneumostier assisted in the operation of StraightBoyz.net from 2014 through earlier this year. The site “offered approximately 619 videos of ‘hook-ups’ between Deneumostier and other men,” including two of the victims referenced in his indictment.
According to court documents, in many of the videos, including those involving the two victims, the men Deneumostier filmed “wore a blindfold and restraints and could not see the defendant or the room in which they were located.”
“The room, however, was in defendant’s residence located in Homestead, Florida,” the proffer states. “Further, unknown to several of the individuals, including Victim 1 and Victim 2, the defendant would make audio and video recordings of the sexual encounter, without the victim’s knowledge or consent, and later post the pornographic videos onto the Straightboyz website.”
According to the prosecuting offices, the 2257 violations with which Deneumostier was charged were as fundamental and clear in their violation of the law as they could be.
“Victim 1 and Victim 2 never provided their state issued identification cards to the defendant, and never consented to having the videos posted onto the internet,” the proffer states.
The court documents also make clear Deneumostier didn’t make much of an effort to deny his crimes once subjected to questioning.
“After being read his Miranda rights by special agents for Homeland Security Investigations, defendant admitted that approximately 150 men were featured on his website and approximately 80 did not know they were being recorded,” according to the proffer. “The defendant explained – and as the videos themselves corroborate – that the individuals would, at his direction, blindfold themselves and the defendant would then set up the Apple devices on tripods to film the encounter.”
While Deneumostier did provide investigators “approximately 30 consent forms from men agreeing to have their pornographic films posted online,” they noted this was “far short of the 619 videos posted and featured on the Straightboyz website.”
Under the plea agreement, Deneumostier acknowledges the court may impose a statutory maximum of five years imprisonment on each of the two counts to which he has pleaded guilty, along with a supervised release term of up to three years for each count. The agreement also calls for the prosecuting offices to recommend that the court “reduce by two levels the sentencing guideline level applicable to the defendant’s offense,” so it’s likely he will receive less than the statutory maximum for each count.
The plea agreement also calls for Deneumostier to “make his best effort to remove from the internet any and all images, including videos and photographs, concerning the victims referenced in the indictment.”
As of the time of this post, the date of Deneumostier’s sentencing hearing had not been set.
