January 17, 2023 - WASHINGTON – Nimrod Shalom, 41, a dual citizen of Israel and the United States, was sentenced, on January 13, 2023, to seven years in prison for transmission of a sexual performance by a minor.

He was sentenced yesterday by the Honorable Beryl A. Howell, who also ordered 10 years of supervised release.

Shalom was arrested on July 23, 2021, after traveling on a plane from Israel to Los Angeles, California. Shalom pleaded guilty on Sept. 29, 2022, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

According to plea documents, on August 1, 2016, the defendant contacted an undercover law enforcement officer (UC) over an online messaging application. The defendant asked the UC whether the UC had a child, the child’s age, and whether the UC “played” sexually with the child. In response, the UC stated that he had a daughter. The defendant stated that he was sexually active with his own four-year-old daughter and sent the UC an image of a child who appeared to be approximately four years old. The defendant informed the UC that he was “not in the US” and that where he lived, “no one cares what you do.” The defendant sent the UC sexually explicit photos of a child he claimed was his four-year-old daughter.

On August 2, 2016, the defendant was detained by the Israeli National Police (INP) in relation to this offense. INP determined that the defendant did not have a four-year-old daughter and that the images that he had transmitted to the UC were believed to have been commercially produced. During an interview with INP, the defendant admitted to using the online application and pretending to be a father with access to a child, in order to persuade individuals to send him child sexual abuse material. INP performed a forensic analysis on the defendant’s iPhone and discovered 23 images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including the images that the defendant had sent to the UC.

In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, Special Agent in Charge Wayne A. Jacobs, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Washington Field Office Criminal and Cyber Crimes Division commended the work of those who worked the case from the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes members of the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Metropolitan Police Department’s Youth Investigations Division, and members of the Israeli National Police. They also expressed appreciation to those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Assistant U.S. Attorneys Caroline Burrell and Lindsay Suttenberg, and Paralegal Specialist Alexis Spencer-Anderson.

Source: DOJ Release