Othello Man Faces Extortion, Child Pornography Charges

An Adams County man has been indicted by a federal grand jury, reports Acting U.S. Attorney Richard Barker.

Othello's Andres Burgos-Silva, 24, was arraigned Wednesday in federal court. He is accused of receiving and manufacturing lewd depictions of minors.

According to Barker, detectives with Othello PD got word that Burgos-Silva possessed a trove of child pornography - some images depicted children as young as six years old.

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Burgos-Silva was first arrested in 2023. As the Columbia Basin Herald reported at the time,

OPD officers have been collaborating for a number of months with the Tooele Police Department in Tooele, Utah to find a suspect, since identified as Burgos-Silva, who was alleged to have extorted and sexually exploited an 11-year-old girl in Tooele, according to the statement. The girl is safe and was never harmed, law enforcement said.

As mentioned in the above paragraph, Burgos-Silva was allegedly in the custom of blackmailing victims.

Detectives say he would extract compromising photos from children. He "contacted several minors on social media and claimed to have sexually explicit photos of the minors and threatened to send the photos to others, unless the minors sent him more sexually explicit photos," Barker writes. 

A subsequent search warrant turned up damning evidence, Barker says, including "electronic devices that allegedly contained depictions of young children being sexually abused."

Burgos-Silva now faces nearly a dozen criminal charges.

The case is led by Othello PD in consultation with Homeland Security Investigations. The attending prosecutor is Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Wick.