A Waipahu man was sentenced this week to 30 years in federal prison for sponsoring the creation of child pornography.
Robert Silva, 52, admitted in 2025 that he had paid adults in the Philippines to sexually abuse children, believed to be between the ages of three and 13, during illicit livestreams.
According to U.S. District Court documents, in Sept. 2018, Silva, from a computer in Hawai‘i, visited a pornographic streaming website and messaged a streamer, asking if they had a “daughter” or “niece” the streamer could “play with.” The conversation continued into private chats, where the streamer — identified in documents only as “PBN” — told Silva he had a 13-year-old niece and requested a $20 tip.
The two then haggled about the price, with the streamer eventually accepting payment of $0.50 per minute of video.
Silva and PBN began a video call involving an underage girl, who undressed on camera. While documents don’t specify how long the call was, Silva reportedly sent PBN a $10 tip and ended the call, explaining to PBN that his credit card had run out.
Silva repeated this process twice more in a similar fashion. In October of 2018, he made a Skype call to another user — this one identified as “HL” — and proposed paying $10 for a “show.”
HL then called Silva via Skype, with the video call depicting an adult woman performing sex acts with an underage boy.
Another Skype call in July 2019 — with user “JCM” — went much the same, with Silva negotiating for a video call involving an adult woman and two underage girls for $3.50 in tips.
Court records indicate all the streamers and victims involved in the case were located in the Philippines, and that Silva had messaged some of them and handled financial transactions through a website for Asian camshows.
A Department of Justice sentencing report also states that Silva would, when the streamers wouldn’t comply with demands, “berate” and “threaten to ruin them.”
Silva was ultimately arrested following an FBI investigation. While few details of this investigation are publicly available, law enforcement officers first seized several computers and hard drives from his residence in June 2024, and he was formally arrested the following September.
As part of a plea agreement in Sept. 2025, Silva admitted to all of this and pled guilty to one of five charges of production of child pornography. While the other four charges were dismissed, U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmore sentenced Silva on Tuesday to 30 years in federal prison, the statutory maximum sentence possible for the charge.
During the sentencing, Gillmore highlighted the egregiousness of Silva’s actions, particularly that Silva had subsequently minimized his crimes by arguing that he had not committed a “hands-on” offense.
Silva will also face a 20-year term of supervision should he still be alive when his prison term ends in 2056.
It is unclear from court records whether the victims were ever identified.
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