Feds: Island Park man sentenced in cyberbullying, child porn case

A judge in Central Islip federal court sentenced an Island Park man Monday to more than 17 years in federal prison for cyberbullying a 12-year-old girl and distributing child pornography.

Lorenzo Arana, 22, who used the online alias “Lorenzo Blake,” had a long and well-documented history of using social media to target underage girls for harassment, abuse, and exploitation, federal prosecutors said. 

Arana had amassed thousands of followers — many of them minors — on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat and YouTube, prosecutors said. 

He solicited sexually explicit material from underage girls and threatened to publicly distribute it, along with sensitive information such as the victims' phone numbers, for conduct he deemed unacceptable — from refusing to send additional pornographic materials to declining his phone calls. 

Arana pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography in November, prosecutors said. His attorney, Evan Sugar of the Federal Defenders of New York, did not immediately return a request for comment. 

Arana’s conviction was the result of his September 2020 online harassment and abuse of a 12-year-old girl identified as Jane Doe #2 in his indictment. Arana solicited sexually explicit material from Jane Doe #2 and then distributed those videos to her friends and classmates on social media, leading the girl to attempt suicide.

Arana acknowledged on social media that he distributed the material to “expose” Jane Doe #2 for refusing to respond to his calls. Law enforcement recovered a text on the girl’s phone in which Arana urged her to “kill ur … self.”

When Arana learned that Jane Doe #2 was contemplating suicide, he said, “I don’t care … she deserves it," according to prosecutors.

Police in another state, responding to a welfare check, found Jane Doe #2 in bed, along with loose pills, two pill bottles, a firearm and a suicide note. The victim survived. 

“Today’s sentence brings justice to a vulnerable young girl and many others like her throughout the country who were terrorized and harmed by the defendant’s weaponization of social media to target them for undeserved cruelty, vulgarity, and abuse,” said Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. 

This prosecution is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative led by the Department of Justice to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

“My message to parents and caregivers is please talk to your children about the dangers of communicating online with strangers who may exploit them and to seek help from a trusted adult if they are being threatened,” Peace said.