A former aide to the mayor of Miami has taken a plea deal in a child pornography case involving a 16-year-old.
Rene Pedrosa, 51, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of receipt of child pornography, court records showed.
He faces a minimum of five years in prison and up to 20 years at sentencing, scheduled for Aug. 14.
Pedrosa had been arrested in 2020 on multiple charges that included producing child pornography and enticing a minor into sexual activity.
Those charges will be dropped as part of the plea deal.
Pedrosa was a high-profile spokesman for Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. Before that, Pedrosa was a longtime reporter for a Miami Spanish-language television station.
According to the federal complaint, Pedrosa contacted the 16-year-old victim in November of 2019 through Instagram to discuss a web design job at the mayor’s office.
During a meeting later that month at City Hall, Pedrosa touched the teen inappropriately, investigators said. Pedrosa and the teen later exchanged explicit photos through text, the complaint said. The teen’s mother reported Pedrosa to Miami police in January 2020.
Pedrosa was initially charged with battery and transmitting pornography to a minor, state court records show. The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office asked Gov. Ron DeSantis to assign the case to a different prosecutor because of contacts Pedrosa had with the Miami office, and the case became federal.
