Peter Truong: Case, Guilty Plea, and Co-Offender Convictions

Peter Truong is an Australian man serving 30 years in a United States federal prison after he and his American partner Mark J. Newton bought a Russian newborn in 2005 and spent the next six years trafficking the boy to a global network of pedophiles for abuse in the United States, Australia, and France.¹ He was sentenced in the Southern District of Indiana on December 9, 2013, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to sexually exploit a child and conspiracy to possess child pornography.²

How He Got the Child

Prosecutors said Truong and Newton paid the boy’s Russian mother $8,000 for her newborn son in 2005.¹ The couple became the child’s legal parents and raised him in Cairns, Queensland, while presenting him publicly as their adopted son.³ They also traveled with him extensively.

What He Did

Between 2005 and 2011, Truong and Newton offered the boy to men around the world for sexual abuse. Every documented offense happened before the child’s sixth birthday.¹ Encounters occurred across the United States, Australia, and France, were filmed in high definition, and were distributed to other offenders.²

Documented episodes included a September 2010 visit in which Florida attorney John R. Powell abused the boy and produced pornography at Truong and Newton’s home, and an April 2011 trip to San Francisco during which Powell and Michigan tennis coach Jason Bettuo participated in abuse that was recorded.² The couple also brought offenders to Australia and took the child to France with Powell.

Truong operated online as “RedRover” and belonged to an encrypted group called “Tail of the Dragon” that had been active for nearly two decades. The group had about 20 core members in the United Kingdom, Lebanon, the United States, and Mexico, protected its communications with encryption, rotated aliases and chat rooms, and moved child abuse material through peer-to-peer and FTP transfers. Investigators later recovered roughly 25,000 photographs and 65 hours of video from a 1.5-terabyte unencrypted hard drive seized from Truong and Newton.⁴

How He Was Caught

The case broke open in mid-2011, when U.S. Postal Inspector Brian Bone raided the Idaho home of child pornographer Donn Casper and found a hidden spindle of DVDs. In interviews, Casper named the “Tail of the Dragon” group and matched real identities to aliases.⁴

The victim himself was identified through images seized from Thomas Vaughn, a network member in Anderson, Indiana. Investigators noticed photographs of a boy with a henna tattoo on his chest and a distinctive mole on his stomach, and forwarded the images to Queensland Police’s Taskforce Argos, which matched them to family photos of Truong and Newton’s son.⁴

Truong and Newton were detained in Los Angeles in October 2011 but released for lack of evidence at that stage. Officers took the child into protective custody the same month after finding him being driven to the Santa Monica Pier by a male associate. The pair were formally arrested and charged in February 2012.⁴ The joint investigation involved the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and Taskforce Argos under Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, with a contribution from New Zealand authorities who had independently found incriminating images in 2011. The prosecution was handled under the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood initiative.²

Guilty Plea and Sentence

Truong, then 36, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to sexually exploit a child and one count of conspiracy to possess child pornography.⁵ On December 9, 2013, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker sentenced him to 30 years in federal prison followed by 10 years of supervised release.² Prosecutors had asked for 33 years, and the plea agreement set a floor of 24 years and a ceiling of 40.⁶

Newton, 42, had already received 40 years, the maximum available, when Judge Barker sentenced him on June 28, 2013, along with lifetime supervised release and $400,000 in restitution to the victim.⁷ The 10-year gap between the two sentences reflected Truong’s cooperation with investigators, which helped identify and pursue other members of the network.⁴

Other Offenders Convicted Through the Case

The investigation into Truong and Newton produced convictions against several men connected to the same child and to the wider “Tail of the Dragon” network.

Jason Bettuo, a 35-year-old junior tennis coach from Michigan who abused the boy, was sentenced to 25 years.⁸
John Rex Powell, a 41-year-old Florida attorney using the alias “thebeav,” agreed to a plea deal calling for 20 to 30 years with lifetime supervision, pleading guilty to conspiring to sexually exploit the boy, running a child pornography enterprise, and conspiring to exploit a second victim in New Jersey.⁸
Edward De Sear, a former senior partner at Allen & Overy in New York, was described by prosecutors as an “avid trader” of abuse material with Truong, who arranged for De Sear to abuse the boy in Australia, the United States, and Brussels. He pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a child and four counts of distributing child pornography, and was sentenced on December 19, 2013 to 17.5 years and $1.2 million in restitution.⁹
Donn Casper, 39, of Meridian, Idaho, whose 2011 arrest opened the case, pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual exploitation of children and was sentenced to 15 years followed by 20 years of probation.¹⁰
Robert Revay, 79, of Oakland Park, Florida, had a 1979 conviction for sexually exploiting a minor and was captured on 1997 video directing Truong’s abuse of a 12-year-old boy in Maryland. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce child pornography and possession of child pornography, and received 15 years with lifetime supervised release.¹¹
Mark Lawless, a 35-year-old sex offender from Mississippi, Texas, received the child for abuse in March 2011.⁴
Thomas Vaughn, 44, of Anderson, Indiana, held the images of the boy with the henna tattoo that led investigators to the victim.⁴

Queensland police separately charged a 29-year-old who had lived with Truong and Newton in Cairns, and who worked as a childcare center director, with using Skype to distribute child pornography. Taskforce Argos said most identified perpetrators were in custody and that inquiries into the network and additional victims were ongoing.⁴

Where the Child Went

After Truong and Newton were arrested, the boy was placed with extended family in the United States.¹² Detective Inspector Rouse said the abuse had ended, and declined to speculate about what the child’s future would look like.

1
The Guardian. Australian Couple Jailed for Using Adopted Son in Global Paedophile Ring
2
U.S. Department of Justice. Hogsett Announces Sentencing of Australian Man in Prosecution of International Child Exploitation Conspiracy
3
New York Daily News. Australian Pair Convicted for Making Child Porn With Adopted Son From Russia
4
ABC News (Australia). Boy With Henna Tattoo: Network Exposed
5
ABC News (Australia). Peter Truong Jailed Over Global Paedophile Ring
6
Sydney Morning Herald. Queensland Paedophile Peter Truong Gets 30 Years in US
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Newton Sentencing Press Release
8
Sydney Morning Herald. US Lawyer Faces Jail for Abusing Australian Boy
9
NJ.com. Saddle River Lawyer Admits to Sex Trafficking of Young Boy Across Europe, Child Porn Distribution
10
KTVB. Meridian Man Gets 15 Years for Child Porn Conviction
11
Sun Sentinel. Broward Man Sentenced for Role in International Child Porn Ring
12
Sydney Morning Herald. Couple Offered Son to Paedophiles