PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney David Metcalf announced that Michael Blazo, 22, of Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, entered a plea of guilty this afternoon before United States District Judge John F. Murphy to manufacture and attempted manufacture of child pornography.
The defendant was charged by indictment in December 2024, arising from his online enticement of 10 minor victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing visual depictions of those acts.
As detailed in court filings, in late 2021, local law enforcement investigated a report that a 12-year-old girl in Ohio had texted child pornography to a stranger she met on the internet. The FBI identified the recipient as the defendant, and in April of 2022 executed a residential search warrant at Blazo’s house, where he lived with his parents.
The investigation revealed that Blazo frequently posed as a teenaged girl or boy to gain victims’ trust, directing the girls to call him “master” or “mommy” or “daddy.” He advised that he was sexually gratified by watching the girls cause pain to themselves and told agents that he talked to minor girls and solicited these illegal images sometimes multiple times per day.
The subsequent review of the defendant’s seized devices revealed dozens of minors with whom he had corresponded online. The FBI confirmed the identities of 10 child victims – ranging in age from just 11 years old to 16 years of age – all of whom manufactured child pornography at the defendant’s direction and sent him the images and videos.
Blazo preyed on these girls for more than three years, and as time progressed, he escalated his sexual abuse, demanding that the girls produce sexual images that involved obvious pain and showed their faces. If the victims expressed reluctance or refused, he extorted additional images by threatening to disseminate online the sexual images they had previously sent him. One child pleaded with Blazo, saying that she would kill herself if he distributed her images, to which the defendant responded with continued threats. The FBI also discovered one child whom the defendant not only victimized online but also traveled to and engaged in sexual intercourse.
The defendant is scheduled to be sentenced on December 7 and faces a maximum possible sentence of 30 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release, with a mandatory minimum term of 15 years’ imprisonment and at least five years of supervised release. Under the terms of his guilty plea agreement, he will also be required to make restitution to his victims.
This case 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. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), 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 projectsafechildhood.gov .
The case was investigated by FBI Philadelphia’s Fort Washington Resident Agency and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michelle Rotella.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office — Eastern District of Pennsylvania — U.S. Department of Justice press release.