El Paso rocker Peter Sebastian Felix, founder of band Bash, sentenced in child porn case
The founder of an El Paso rock band accused of using his popularity to gain the trust of underage girls on Tuesday was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on a child pornography charge, officials said.
Peter Sebastian Felix, 29, pleaded guilty last June in federal court to one count of receipt and distribution of child porn and one count of possession of prepubescent child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas said Wednesday.
Felix, performing as Sebastian Felix, was a vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the heavy-alternative rock band Bash, which he founded at the age of 15 with a childhood friend in 2007.
Over a decade, Bash recorded several albums' worth of material and music videos, toured the country and opened for popular rock groups such as The Offspring, Theory of a Deadman and Buckcherry. Bash celebrated its 10th anniversary with a show at Tricky Falls, a former music venue in Downtown El Paso, in 2017.
HSI arrests El Paso rocker Sebastian Felix
In 2019, Felix, then 25, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations agent as part of “Operation Predator," which targets child porn and sexual abuse.
The investigation was started by HSI agents in Houston after a 16-year-old girl in Montgomery County, Texas, reported she had exchanged sexually explicit images and videos with Felix, according to a federal criminal complaint.
When HSI served a search warrant at Felix's East Side home, agents found a file on a USB drive containing a FaceTime-type video of the girl performing sexual acts and Felix’s face visible as part of the video chat, the complaint states.
Agents also seized an external hard drive with about 50 files containing suspected child sexual exploitation images and videos, including one involving a child between 8 and 10 years old, authorities said.
"Protecting children, who are among the most vulnerable victims in this country, will always be a priority," U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza of the Western District of Texas said in a statement. "We and our partners are always here to identify these predators, put an end to their harmful behavior, and bring them to justice."
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Felix was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. district court in El Paso to 12 years in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release. A victim restitution hearing is scheduled for March.
"Justice has been served. However, no sentence is lengthy enough to penalize predators for the lifetime of pain and suffering the innocent children whom they’ve victimized will suffer," Special Agent in Charge Francisco B. Burrola of the HSI El Paso Division said in a statement.
"HSI continues to work tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to investigate, arrest and prosecute child predators in our shared mission to protect children and prosecute perpetrators whose behavior has no place in our society," Burrola said.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso rocker, founder of Bash the band, sentenced in child porn case
