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Virginia Beach man that impersonated cop pleads guilty to child pornography charge

Posted at 12:56 PM, Jan 08, 2019
and last updated 2019-01-08 12:59:58-05

HAMPTON ROADS, Va. — Leedente Brown, 31, has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a child pornography charge that stemmed from him also posing as a Virginia Beach Police Department officer to get an 8-year-old to send him sexually explicit pictures.

Leedente Brown

According to court documents and officials, Brown agreed to plead guilty to Count One of the indictment charging him with Production of Child Pornography. He faces between a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison for the charge he pleaded guilty to and a maximum term of 30 years in prison.

Brown was originally arrested after an investigation that looked into a relationship he had with this 8-year-old from June 2017 to early August 2017. This included messages and phone calls (through text and messaging/phone apps), plus videos that were sexual in nature. He also visited the 8-year-old outside her home on several occasions.

According to court documents, Brown was discovered to be committing the crime he pleaded guilty to when the mother of the 8-year-old victim saw a suspicious man outside her daughter’s window at their family’s home in Virginia Beach. This led the mother to call Virginia Beach Police, but Brown returned when she was on the phone with police dispatch.

The second encounter with Brown on that August 9, 2017, evening led the mother of the 8-year-old to check her daughter’s cellphone, which had received messages from Brown during this time.

The victim’s mother would reportedly find text conversations between Brown and her daughter. One message in which the 8-year-old told Brwon to “Run,” when her mother saw the 31-year-old outside her window.

The 8-year-old would later tell police, according to court documents, that Brwon would send really long text messages and sometimes get mad at her because he wanted to come into her house in order to have sex. The 8-year-old also told police that she thought her and brown were in a romantic relationship.

Brown would confess to police that he wanted to have sex with the 8-year-old and that he had been planning for weeks to set up a sexual encounter. He also admitted to asking the 8-year-old to send him sexually explicit images of herself.

To further its investigation, VBPD detectives searched Brown’s cellphone which showed images of minor girls and videos captured from live web streaming and other means. Some of the videos depicted underage girls exposing their vagina and masturbating.

Brown reportedly also lied to the 8-year-old about his age, telling her that he was 21-years-old.

Brown will be sentenced in Norfolk federal court on April 8, 2018.