Brentwood pastor Jose Saez Jr. pleads guilty to sexual exploitation of a child

A former Brentwood pastor pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to sexual exploitation of a child, a charge that could lead to a minimum of at least 15 to 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors had initially accused Jose Saez Jr., 30, a pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Alumbrando El Camino church on Second Avenue in Brentwood, of engaging in online chats with minors and enticing a 15-year-old boy and a 19-year-old male pretending to be 16 years old to perform sexually explicit acts and sending videos of the encounters to other men.

Last April, they submitted a new indictment including charges related to explicit interactions with four more minors, according to the indictment.

On Tuesday afternoon in a federal courtroom in Central Islip, Saez admitted exploiting one, identified only as John Doe Number Two. "Guilty, your honor," Saez answered when U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack asked how he pleaded. Azrack said that in addition to prison time, Saez faced a fine, supervised release and registration as a sex offender.

Saez told a courtroom that included 10 people sitting behind him that he had "induced an underaged teen" into improper conduct, on or around May 4, 2023, then taken pictures and sent them over the internet. The conduct, he said, took place on Long Island.

Azrack set sentencing for 11 a.m. Sept. 3.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Toporovsky told the judge that, had the case gone to trial, the government would have presented evidence showing conversations between Saez and underaged youths and at least one in-person meeting.

A bearded Saez, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis while in custody, wore a drab olive-green T-shirt and wheeled himself into and out of the courtroom in a wheelchair, accompanied by U.S. Marshalls.

Before entering his plea, Saez smiled and chatted quietly with the people sitting behind him. During the hearing, he and his lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, detailed a long list of medications Saez was taking for his multiple sclerosis, including the painkiller OxyContin, which they said he had taken Tuesday morning, but Saez said he was clearheaded when he made his plea.

In a news release Tuesday, prosecutors said Saez had used an encrypted messaging service to engage in sexually explicit conversations with minors. One of his conversation partners, though, was an undercover law enforcement officer. In conversations with that officer in August 2023, according to the release Saez said that" he had sexually abused an infant, that his "sweet spot" was molesting children between the ages of 11 and 15, and that he was able to find his younger victims at "church," according to the release. 

Prosecutors said at a December 2023 court appearance that a raid on Saez's Brentwood home found evidence he engaged in explicit online chats with as many as 30 minors, though they said it would be difficult to identify each of the youths.

In some cases, prosecutors have said, Saez contacted them through open channels, then coerced them to move to the encrypted networks to continue the exchanges. Saez sometimes pretended to be a girl to convince boys to interact with him, prosecutors have said. In one case, they said, Saez asked a minor to show identification proving they were underage.

Prosecutors have said investigators discovered 12,000 videos, 400,000 images and 6,800 online chats taken from other devices during the search, a quantity they said was potentially unprecedented.

Toporovsky and Moskowitz declined to comment Tuesday, as did several of the people who had been sitting behind Saez in the courtroom. A message left with Saez’s former church was not returned.

According to court papers, FBI investigators found a cellphone in Saez's house with an app that contained sexually explicit videos sent by a 16-year-old. "I'm sorry that I cannot stop," Saez told an investigator, according to the complaint.