GAINESVILLE — A former corrections officer from Cross City used Reddit to offer a minor child for sexual exploitation and distributed child pornography, pleading guilty to both federal charges in the Northern District of Florida.
Devin Scott Waldeck, 35, entered the plea on one count of child exploitation and one count of distribution of child pornography. The child exploitation count carries a mandatory minimum of 15 years and up to 30 years in federal prison. The distribution charge carries a mandatory minimum of five years and up to 20 years. Both counts include up to a lifetime of supervised release.
“The sexual exploitation of a child is a horrific crime, and the distribution of child sexual abuse material is a continuing offense that has the effect of re-victimizing the innocent child each and every time those disturbing images and videos are shared,” said U.S. Attorney John P. Heekin. “Our state and federal law enforcement partners are relentlessly pursuing the sexual predators who seek to victimize and sexually exploit children, and my office will continue to aggressively prosecute those sick individuals to ensure they are locked away and unable to harm our kids.”
Court documents show that in November 2025, law enforcement discovered Waldeck was posing as the mother of a minor child on Reddit, offering the child to another user and graphically describing ways the user could sexually exploit the minor. Waldeck stored explicit videos and pictures of the minor child in a secret app on his cell phone, along with sexually explicit material of other named individuals. He had hundreds of communications with other Reddit users discussing sexual encounters, including more than a dozen conversations in which he stated he had sexual encounters or wanted to have sexual encounters with minors.
The FBI investigated the case with assistance from the Dixie County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christie S. Utt is prosecuting. The case resulted from Operation Relentless Justice, a coordinated federal enforcement effort to identify, track and arrest child sex predators. It was also brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Waldeck’s sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 25 at 2 p.m. at the United States Courthouse in Tallahassee before Chief U.S. District Judge Allen C. Winsor.