Justin Steven Boileau

Introduction

Justin Steven Boileau, a 31-year-old former resident of Reston, Virginia, who also spent time in Merritt Island, Florida, was sentenced on November 3, 2026 to 25 years in federal prison for using Snapchat to sexually exploit a pair of middle-school girls from Southwest Virginia. Boileau pleaded guilty in February 2026 to two counts of sexual exploitation of children, admitting conduct in which he posed online as a hockey player named “Josh” and persuaded two twelve-year-old girls in Russell County, Virginia to send him explicit images of themselves — and, at his direction, to write messages on their bodies when they produced them. Law enforcement has confirmed he enticed at least nine other minors in other jurisdictions.

Background Information

Boileau’s victims were strangers to him except through an app. In the fall of 2023, when he was in his late twenties and living in Reston, he began conversing via Snapchat with a twelve-year-old girl who lived in Russell County, Virginia — Minor Victim One in the court documents. He portrayed himself online as a hockey player named “Josh,” steered the conversation into explicitly sexual territory, and kept it there for several months, through the early part of 2024. At his request the girl sent him nude photos and videos of herself; he sent her images of what he claimed was his own penis. In early 2024 he opened the same playbook with Minor Victim Two, another twelve-year-old from Russell County, whose conversations with him were likewise sexual in nature and who, at his request, sent nude pictures and pictures of herself masturbating.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Boileau pleaded guilty in February 2026 to two counts of sexual exploitation of children and was sentenced on November 3, 2026 to 25 years in federal prison.

What distinguishes the case in the court documents is the degree of control Boileau exercised over the imagery. He did not merely request pictures — he directed his minor victims to write messages on their bodies when they produced the images and videos for him, a marker investigators read as proof that the material was made to his specification, and the law treats production of such depictions as among the most serious child-exploitation offenses. He knew both girls were minors when he requested the images; the girls were twelve. The two counts he pleaded to covered the two victims, but the investigation did not stop at the Western District of Virginia’s border: law enforcement has confirmed Boileau enticed at least nine other minors to produce child sexual abuse material in other jurisdictions, a total victim count that makes the two-count plea a floor rather than the full record.

The sentence, imposed on November 3, 2026, put Boileau in federal prison until his mid-fifties. First Assistant United States Attorney Robert N. Tracci framed the prosecution as a statement of priority: “Protecting children from online threats is a clear prosecution priority in the Western District of Virginia. We will continue to work with our partners at the FBI, as well as state and local law enforcement, to seek accountability for online sexual predators.” The case was investigated by the FBI and the Russell County Sheriff’s Office — the locality where both twelve-year-old victims lived — and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Carrie Macon under the department’s Project Safe Childhood framework.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The sentencing was announced as a Project Safe Childhood case, the Justice Department’s nationwide child-exploitation initiative led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, which marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children and to identify and rescue victims. The twenty-five-year term — imposed on guilty pleas to two production-based exploitation counts — reflects the federal sentencing structure’s tiering of offenses against the youngest victims, and the announcement’s confirmation that at least nine additional minors were enticed in other jurisdictions signals that the evidentiary picture behind the plea was substantially larger than the counts of conviction.

Current Status

Boileau, 31, is beginning a 25-year federal prison sentence imposed November 3, 2026, following his February 2026 guilty pleas. At release he will be in his mid-fifties, and as a convicted child-exploitation offender he faces registration obligations that follow him for the rest of his life. The adjudicated record — two twelve-year-old victims in Russell County, the “Josh” persona, the body-writing instructions, the nine-plus additional confirmed victims elsewhere — is now a matter of court documents, not allegation, and no appeal or post-conviction development has been announced.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Boileau’s life as a free adult ended at 31 with a sentence that will hold him in federal custody into his mid-fifties. The Snapchat grooming pattern he used — a false identity built around a plausible hobby, a slow escalation into sexual conversation, requests for imagery, instructions dictating exactly how the images were to be made — is the template Project Safe Childhood prosecutions document again and again, and the confirmation that he applied it to at least eleven children across multiple jurisdictions places him among the more prolific offenders prosecuted in the Western District of Virginia. For the two girls in Russell County, the identification and rescue mission the program advertises concluded with a conviction; for Boileau, the online persona that made it possible is now evidence in a closed federal case file.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Virginia, “Former Reston Man Sentenced to 25 years For Sexual Exploitation of 12-year-old Girls,” November 4, 2026. source