St. Louis County Man Who Paid to Watch Sexual Abuse of Children Found Guilty

ST. LOUIS - Jurors on Wednesday found a man who paid to have children sexually abused in the Philippines guilty of all the charges that he faced.

Sanel Smajlovic, 37, of St. Louis County, was found guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis of four counts of attempted sexual exploitation of children, two counts of receiving child pornography and two counts of soliciting child pornography for conduct that occurred between 2017 and 2019.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson said Smajlovic "has a voracious appetite for the sexual abuse of young children." Smajlovic sought out vulnerable children in poverty and other desperate circumstances. Those children were in the care of relatives or other trusted adults, who asked for money for food and milk in exchange for consenting to Smajlovic's demands, she said.

Smajlovic communicated with traffickers hundreds of times and sent money to the Philippines dozens of times to the adults who sexually abused six victims at Smajlovic's direction, evidence and testimony during the trial showed. A credit card that he used was in his wallet when he was arrested at St. Louis Lambert International Airport after returning from a trip to Romania.

Although the live stream videos for which he paid were not recoverable, investigators do have the chats in which he discussed, solicited, negotiated and directed the abuse. Those chats included demands for sex acts and very young children that made even the child traffickers balk, evidence and testimony showed.

Court-approved searches of Smajlovic's electronic devices uncovered 36 videos and thousands of images containing child sexual abuse material, as well as video games that simulated the sexual abuse of elementary school-age children, evidence and testimony showed. They also found infant and toddler-sized sex dolls in a safe in the home he shared with his parents.

Two of the traffickers with whom Smajlovic communicated were arrested and the child victims rescued, according to trial testimony.

The investigation began when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) identified traffickers in the Philippines who were live streaming the sexual abuse of children to paying customers worldwide. HSI has dismantled that network and others around the world and has been pursuing their customers.

Smajlovic's sentencing date has not yet been set. The attempted sexual exploitation charges are punishable by 15 to 30 years in prison and the receiving and soliciting child pornography charges are punishable by five to 20 years in prison.

The case was investigated by HSI, with the assistance of forensic specialists from the Justice Department Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and the Missouri State Technical Assistance Team. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jillian Anderson and Colleen Lang are prosecuting the case. It was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. 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. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.