33-year-old Vincent Deritis of Hickory was sentenced Tuesday (February 28) to 50 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for the sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of child sexual abuse material. The announcement was made by Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Deritis was also ordered to register as a sex offender after he is released from prison. Chief Reed Baer of the Hickory Police Department joined U.S. Attorney King in making the announcement.

According to filed court documents, evidence presented at trial and the sentencing hearing, between October 2018 and March 2019, Deritis created child pornography of an unknowing minor victim on three occasions. On April 3, 2019, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Deritis’ residence.

A forensic analysis of electronic devices seized from the defendant’s home and files in his cloud storage account revealed that Deritis possessed images and videos of the minor victim naked while getting in or out of the shower, photos of the minor’s genitalia, and thousands of images of child pornography Deritis had downloaded from the internet. On June 22, 2022, a federal jury convicted Deritis of three counts of production of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.

Deritis is currently in federal custody. He was being held in the Catawba County Detention Facility as of earlier today (March 1) and will be transferred to the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation of a federal facility. In making Tuesday’s announcement, U.S. Attorney King commended HSI and the Hickory Police Department for their investigation of the case. Assistant United States Attorney Nick J. Miller, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte prosecuted the case.