The US Military Contractor Accused of Sex Crimes — Then Convicted of Espionage

On Sunday, June 17, 2012, a contractor named Christopher R. Glenn accessed a classified computer network at the US military's Joint Task Force-Bravo (JTF-B) in Honduras and began stealing defense secrets.

Glenn, a civilian systems administrator, amassed onto his hard drive copies of more than 1,000 email messages from the inbox of JTF-B's commander, along with several email attachments. Those included "Key Issues" papers on Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, along with reports on "Strategic Seminars" in which the Pentagon anticipated threats and responses. Many of the files were classified Secret.

At 1:55pm, Glenn overrode system safeguards and burned all the files onto a DVD. At 1:59pm, he erased the Windows log entries tracking his actions. He then shut down his computer.

Glenn would later admit to authorities that he took the DVD home, uploaded the files onto a network storage device, and encrypted them. Prosecutors believe he eventually allowed two foreign nationals, identified in court records only by the initials A.A. and Y.A.E., to remotely access the files.

He pleaded guilty last January to computer intrusion and willful retention of classified material. On July 31, he's scheduled for sentencing in US District Court.

His sentence, however, will not address what may be his most sensational crime.

Honduran prosecutors have formally accused Glenn of human trafficking and rape. Wilmer Barahona, a former legal advisor in the Honduran Attorney General's office who worked on the case, says that during his nine years in the unit assigned to crimes against children, he saw a lot of cruel abuse. But this case stood out.

"It was a foreigner doing it," Barahona told VICE News. "Up until that point, we hadn't seen something like that. We'd gone up against pederasts who abused children, but not in such a peculiar way."

* * *

A US magistrate judge from the Southern District of Florida wrote in a March 2014 detention order that Christopher R. Glenn appears to have "lived a life of deception for many years."

Glenn possesses a Florida license under his real name, but he has employed at least three aliases, including Derek John Michael, which he used to obtain fraudulent driver's licenses in Texas and California.

The US government has claimed he holds 11 foreign bank accounts, from Australia to the United Arab Emirates, containing a total of about $800,000. (Glenn denies this.) He "has an extensive history of foreign travel," the judge wrote in his order, "and has spent very little time in the United States."

Glenn declined through his attorney to speak to VICE News. But according to court records, he grew up in Buffalo, New York. His parents divorced when he was about 12, and he followed his father first to California, then to Mexico. His contracting career started with his first trip to Iraq in 2003.

In 2005, he was doing IT work for Blackwater in Iraq's Green Zone when he met a petite 19-year-old Iraqi college student named Majid Tarik Abdul. A part-time contractor, Tarik needed an Arabic language pack installed on her computer, she told VICE News. So she sought help from Glenn, who spoke Arabic well. The 6'1", 250-pound Glenn had a "pudgy" build and spoke with a lisp, she recalled, but he was engaging. After several weeks, she agreed to grab a meal with him at the Subway on base.

"He alters his personality to whatever you want to see or hear," she said. "And say what you want about him, he's very smart." He bragged often to Tarik about his "super-hacker" prowess.

The pair never dated in the American sense, but a few months after their first meeting, Glenn introduced himself to her family and asked for her hand in marriage. Tarik's mother liked the idea, suggesting to her daughter that this was Allah's plan for her.

In November 2005, the two married in Jordan, where they rented an apartment and lived for about a year while they waited for Tarik's US visa. She continued her studies, and Glenn worked on learning more Arabic. She marveled at her husband's memory as he learned to recite long excerpts from the Quran by heart, but she says he was hardly an observant Muslim, failing to pray five times a day or fast during Ramadan.

When Tarik's visa came through, the pair traveled briefly to Buffalo, where she met some of his family. Then they relocated to Chula Vista, California, just south of San Diego. There, she discovered her husband maintained alter egos — the landlord greeted him as Mr. Michael. Others called him Fernando Albergue. That's when she first heard him speak fluent Spanish.

A year into the marriage, Tarik says, she decided she wanted out — Glenn would fly into violent rages without warning. In November 2006, she was in Ft. Benning, Georgia preparing to ship out for another contracting stint in Iraq when she got a call from Glenn. She says he told her he'd just beaten up a former business associate and left him tied to a fence near the Mexican border. True or not, she was frightened. She told him the marriage was over and shipped out to Iraq a week later.

Glenn sent her a package of gifts — chocolate, perfume — then within a few days, she says, he called her on a military phone line, cursing her and threatening to take all of her money and break her legs if she didn't come back to him.

"He's on a completely different level of jacked-up," said Tarik, who eventually returned to America and became a US citizen. She's now remarried and a linguist in the Army Reserve.

Tarik hasn't been in touch with Glenn since their divorce in 2008. Without knowing about the sex crime accusations in Honduras, she told a story about their brief courtship in Iraq, when Glenn visited her family in Baghdad. While at their house, Tarik recalled, Glenn liked to take off his shirt and ask her sisters, ages 10 and 14 at the time, to scratch his back. Tarik says she dismissed it as a cultural difference, but found it strange.

"He was really creepy around them," she said.

* * *

On April 19, 2007, Glenn — then 26 — walked into the US consulate in Sydney, Australia with Khadraa Adeeb. She was six years his junior, an Iraq native who'd fled her homeland and become a naturalized Australian. They submitted a petition that day to launch her on the path to US citizenship.

Glenn and Adeeb, who claimed their romance began on a Muslim dating site, filled out their forms as a married couple, though they weren't married. Later, when the embassy suspected fraud and asked for more details, they turned in fabricated documents.

The pair officially married in April 2007, then moved to Camp Bucca, Iraq, the site of a notorious military prison that some now consider the birthplace of the Islamic State. Glenn got a job as an IT consultant for Al Barth, an Iraqi general contracting firm.

By December 2008, Glenn was facing scrutiny from the Army's Criminal Investigation Division for possible fraud, according to documents obtained by VICE News under the Freedom of Information Act [pdf below]. Acting on a tip, Army investigators spent months looking into Glenn. They took 14 sworn statements, searched his on-base residence, and analyzed the computer hardware he kept there.

They concluded that Glenn, aided in part by his wife, devised a scheme to make fake badges for Iraqi workers so they could walk through Camp Bucca without an escort. Glenn also made a fake Common Access Card, a federal civilian employee ID. Investigators reported that Glenn and Adeeb were thus able to steal fuel, meals from the dining facility, troop medical center visits, and Army Post Office services to the tune of more than $17,000.

Glenn admitted at the time that he stole postal services, but denied the rest. Camp Bucca's base commander, however, made an administrative finding that Glenn and Adeeb had "committed serious frauds upon the US government." The commander barred them from Camp Bucca and expelled them from all coalition facilities in Iraq. Glenn did not appeal the findings.

Army prosecutors decided not to refer the case to the Department of Justice; as of June 2008, only acts of military contractor fraud over $500,000 met the definition of "significant" cases that had to be forwarded to federal prosecutors, according to a Defense Department rule.

Glenn and Adeeb returned to Australia, where she found a job at the Australian Agency for International Development. Around this time, Glenn "became obsessed with gaining access to classified information," the government claims. According to court documents, he was teaching himself tradecraft — professional spy techniques — by purchasing books like Surveillance Countermeasures, How to Disappear, and A Time to Betray.

* * *

JTF-B is located on the Honduran Air Force's Soto Cano Air Base in the Comayagua Valley, a dry, flat expanse ringed by mountains and pine forest. It's home to more than 500 US airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines.

Most of the Comayagua Valley's 124,000 residents live in the municipality of Comayagua, a former Spanish colonial capital. By the middle of 2010, Glenn was there, staying on the town's southern edge at the five-story Hotel Plaza Futura. A hotel employee told VICE News that Glenn was an amiable guy who sometimes spoke in Arabic while he Skyped in the corridor. Adeeb visited him at least twice, but he received no other visitors, the employee said. Glenn did, however, make a friend at the hotel: Juan Angel Velasquez.

Velasquez was in his late twenties, with a broad face and faint moustache. A server in the hotel restaurant who spoke decent English, he was living with his girlfriend, Celenia Banegas, in the Colonia 21 de Abril, a poor suburb east of town. Velasquez owned a modest parcel of land of perhaps half an acre next door to his own home. He eventually sold the land to Glenn, who bought it using not his own name, but the name of a friend who lived overseas.

On that lot, Glenn began constructing a cinderblock compound that featured a high exterior wall, a roof over an open-air garage, and a two-story, three-bedroom residence. Glenn sometimes slept at Velasquez's house while it was being built.

* * *

Glenn's job at JTF-B was to implement Windows 7 and serve as systems administrator. He was subcontracted by the telecommunications firm Harris Corporation to do it. It's unclear how he got hired given his blemished record in Iraq — neither Harris nor the Army agreed to an interview — but court records show that when Glenn started his contract in February 2012, he was given Secret security clearance.

The methods he used to steal the commander's files were tricks "an average hacker should be able to do," said Sam Glines, CEO and co-founder of the Bay Area-based network security company Norse. For example, the government's forensic analysis showed that Glenn executed "packet sniffing and keyboard logging," or digital wiretaps, to pilfer the passwords he needed. He also set up an "SSH tunnel" to get through the firewall and burn his DVD. Glines called these operations "pretty standard."

"He could be super sophisticated," Glines told VICE News. "I can't say. A lot of the systems used by civilians or military don't have proper security controls."

Court records show that on July 19, a month after he stole the emails and attachments, Glenn's JTF-B machine "showed signs of a virus, as well as signs that the computer had accessed a malware site." A week and a half after that, security technicians asked him for the hard drive. He handed over two or three drives — he claims he was working with several at the time — but not the one with the virus.

When the technicians returned for that drive, prosecutors say, Glenn "tried to tamper" with it "and had to be physically restrained by a supervisor" so that they could confiscate it. Army investigators seized all the hardware at Glenn's JTF-B workspace on August 27.

Two days later, Glenn boarded a flight to Florida and reunited with Adeeb. On August 31 and September 19, the couple visited several ATMs and bank branches in West Palm Beach. Drawing from a joint account with Bank of America, they made multiple cash withdrawals in increments of less than $10,000. All told, they withdrew $43,200.

Glenn now claims he withdrew the money to invest in his house, explore other business ventures, and prevent Harris Corporation from revoking his pay over the malware incident. The government, however, alleges he "drained" his bank account to move assets around without being detected.

Despite his suspicious activity, Glenn flew in and out of Honduras several times for the next year and a half, according to an FBI affidavit. It's not clear why Glenn was never detained; the bureau declined to comment for this story. The feds finally arrested Glenn in West Palm Beach on February 27, 2014, with an indictment against him for violating the Espionage Act. But they lacked a key piece of evidence: The actual files he'd stolen. Those were sitting in his compound in Comayagua.

The FBI's Legal Attaché office at the US Embassy in San Salvador, which covers Honduras, told VICE News that FBI agents may legally search a US citizen's residence in a foreign country only if they have that country's permission.

The FBI needed to get inside Glenn's compound. And to do that, they needed the Hondurans.

* * *

Early on March 11, 2014 — two weeks after Glenn's arrest — a small convoy of pickups and SUVs without plates left the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa and snaked through the mountains. The convoy was on its way to a raid.

Inside one of the vehicles sat Barahona, the Honduran state legal advisor — and he had serious doubts about what was about to transpire. Barahona was travelling with his boss, a national prosecutor of crimes against children; a judge; some US-trained Honduran detectives; at least nine black-clad special-ops policemen; and a handful of FBI agents. They were headed to Glenn's cinderblock compound with a warrant accusing the American of rape and human trafficking. They'd been investigating him for months, according to court documents.

But as the team descended into the Comayagua Valley and sped past the entrance to JTF-B, Barahona believed the true motive for the search had nothing to do with sex crimes.

"The impression I had," Barahona told VICE News, "was that this was really a cleverly designed strategy [by the Americans] to get access to the evidence he had in his house."

Barahona suspected the Americans wished to search Glenn's compound for the stolen defense documents, but that lacking jurisdiction, they'd concocted a story about Glenn abusing local girls, which led to the raid, which the FBI had joined as advisors.

The convoy entered Comayagua and halted in a strip mall parking lot. Although Glenn was locked up in Florida, they were being careful. Days of surveillance in Colonia 21 de Abril had revealed no other potential threats inside the compound, which was fitted with two exterior security cameras and a double roll of razor wire. Still, members of a special-ops police unit were spearheading the maneuver.

"The information we had was that there were guns in there," Mateo Galo, the Honduran prosecutor of crimes against children who joined the raid, told VICE News. "We were prepared for anything."

The convoy exited the strip mall, turned off Comayagua's paved streets, and drove up the main road of Colonia 21 de Abril. Just before 9:30am, the team pulled up at Glenn's compound. The presence of the notoriously corrupt Honduran police alarmed neighbors.

"I'm 74 years old," Maria Melba Bonilla later told VICE News as she discussed seeing the convoy that day. "I'm old enough to know when you see something like that, you go home and lock the door."

The search took four hours as Barahona sweat under his protective vest in the brutal sun. He was serving as a compliance witness; his task was to make sure the FBI agents respected Honduran law.

Technically, they did not, he told VICE News.

The agents climbed up to Glenn's master bedroom on the second floor of the compound. Next to the bed was a TV screen showing feeds of the surveillance cameras, two outside and two inside. There were pairs of women's underwear on shelves, and an empty bottle of Viibryd, an anti-depressant, next to the bed, the Honduran investigators wrote in their report.

There was also a Synology network attached storage device that had four 500 GB hard drives. According to Barahona, the Americans plugged their own device into it and made a backup even though they weren't specifically authorized by a judge to do so — which, he adds, amounts to tampering with evidence. (The FBI declined to comment on the assertion.)

On that Synology device, inside an encrypted compartment, the agents discovered the secret files Glenn had stolen from JTF-B, according to the plea agreement. Investigators also seized various discs in the house. One turned out to be the original DVD onto which Glenn had burned the stolen files.

The agents also made another discovery in the house — two Honduran girls, ages 16 and 18.

Several news photographers, tipped off by the cops, gathered in front of the compound, jostling for the chance to get pictures of the niñas. Galo's staff discreetly ushered the two girls into separate SUVs with tinted windows and drove them away from the compound for questioning clear of the press. At first, the girls revealed little; according to Galo, Glenn had been sending them messages and money through the wife of a fellow inmate in Florida.

"He was keeping them nice and calm" so that they wouldn't leave and report Glenn to the authorities, Galo said. The girls appeared shocked to learn that Glenn was in jail.

Barahona sat in the car with the 16-year-old as she told her story. She seemed protective of Glenn.

"She felt that instead of being her abuser," he said, "[Glenn] was her benefactor…. I got the impression that the whole thing about the girls — it was true. It wasn't just invented."

* * *

Honduran prosecutors believe that in 2012 and 2013, while Glenn was working at JTF-B, he sexually assaulted several girls from rural villages. At least six girls have told their stories to the FBI and Honduran investigators. Four girls claim Glenn lured them to his home, then drugged them until they blacked out. Two claim Glenn forcibly made them his "wives" in video-recorded ceremonies. And one of those girls claims Glenn sexually enslaved her for months.

The six girls who shared their stories in Honduran court didn't do so in person, but rather through a cámara gesell, or a closed-circuit interrogation system. A victim sits in a room with a psychologist who wears an earpiece. Using cameras and microphones, a judge or lawyer can interact with the girl only via the psychologist.

The girls were not always consistent, especially with names and dates. Galo believes some of them lost track of the passage of time because they were so cloistered. As one victim said in response to a question, "I don't have the exact date because I never left the house."

"They are vulnerable girls," Galo said. "They haven't had any schooling yet. So sometimes they get what's happening, and sometimes not."

Still, they agreed on certain details.

The first girls to allegedly encounter Glenn recalled him driving up in a red double-cabin Toyota Tundra pickup. Velasquez would accompany him and do most of the talking. The pair would tell villagers they worked for religious organizations and needed cooks and maids.

That's how Martina (not her real name), who is known in Honduran documents as witness C3, and who appears to be Victim 2 in an FBI affidavit, said it began for her.

Martina testified that the men came to her village on the afternoon of April 7, 2012. Velasquez promised her 3,000 lempiras — about $140 — for work at Lago de Yojoa, a volcanic crater lake popular with tourists. Her father frowned on the idea, but ultimately agreed to it. Martina's mother told her to pack her things and go.

The 15-year-old got into the vehicle with Velasquez and "Yusi" — Glenn's Muslim alias — and they all drove off. But they did not go to the lake. Instead, they drove her six hours away to Velasquez's house in Comayagua (Glenn's compound next door was still under construction), arriving at midnight.

The next day, Velasquez filled out a certificate and informed Martina she was going to marry Glenn. He assured the girl he'd already secured permission from her parents, though she would later find out that he'd done no such thing. Nor did Martina herself ever consent to marriage.

"I didn't tell them yes or no," she testified.

Velasquez filmed the ceremony. Afterwards, Martina recalled, "they gave me a pill… they told me it was a vitamin." She says she took it and soon lost consciousness.

She claims she woke up three days later — again, the girls appeared to have trouble discerning the passage of time — next to Glenn. She was wearing different clothes, with an aching abdomen and blood on the bed. Glenn told her to get up and wash his clothes. Martina asked to call her family. He said no. He kept her there for about a year, court records suggest.

During the day, Glenn would leave the house, presumably to work at JTF-B. Martina, however, was not allowed to leave. Velasquez's girlfriend, Banegas, kept her company and bought her gifts like sandals, lotions, and soaps. Asked by the court what her duties were, Martina said she was forced to have sex with Glenn.

"He would pray," she said, "then he would tell me to take off my clothes, then he would grab me [and] throw me on the bed." She said he would also often get angry and beat her. She said he periodically gave her three small white "vitamins," which made her dizzy until she went to sleep.

Court records show Glenn traveled often during this period. At one point he returned with a burka, and forced Martina to wear it at all times — except when they took a trip to recruit other girls, which they did at least once.

That girl testified in Honduras as witness A1, and appears to be the same person the FBI calls Victim 1. She told a similar story of how the men recruited her, then "married" her to Glenn and drugged her. She said she woke up 15 hours later feeling nauseous. Walking, she testified, felt "uncomfortable." Glenn returned her to her village the next day, informing her that they were already "divorced," and that she shouldn't tell her mother what happened.

Sometime around March 2013, court records suggest, Martina's parents approached the police because they had not heard from their daughter in so long. Once Glenn learned the police were investigating, he told Velasquez to return Martina to her village for the Easter holiday.

Later, Glenn drove to the village to fetch her, but Martina would not get in his car. One witness told the FBI that Glenn gave Martina's parents rice, beans, and soda, while another said he gave them 25,000 Honduran lempiras (about $1,500) and told them to "build a new house." But Martina was adamant. She refused to return to the compound.

In October 2013, law enforcement agents in Comayagua received a tip that there was a foreigner in Colonia 21 de Abril living with minors, and that the minors could be heard crying inside the building. FBI agents stationed in Honduras as part of a transnational anti-gang unit began investigating, and eventually tracked down Martina.

As the investigators built their case, Glenn modified his tactics. He began broadcasting help-wanted ads on the radio to attract young girls to the house. Three of the girls interviewed by authorities said they responded to such an ad. Two were sisters.

They testified that they quarreled with each other one evening, so Glenn gave them white pills he called acetaminophen to calm them down. Both girls passed out in different rooms, and don't remember the rest of the night. One of the sisters testified she might have been raped, but said she wasn't sure.

"It would be good to know the truth," she said.

She was 14 years old on the night in question.

* * *

The girls' testimony was bolstered by evidence seized the day of the raid, including photos of what appear to be "wedding" ceremonies with Glenn and the girls, a black head scarf, a box of birth control pills, and a beige bag with "various bottles and boxes of drugs." Galo said these drugs, possibly Glenn's sedatives, were sent to the US for testing, but he had not yet received any results.

Galo said that after the raid, law enforcement officials gathered the girls in Tegucigalpa and recorded their statements. Then they transferred them to a state "protection center" for psychological evaluations. However, all six managed to escape — Galo said he doesn't know how — and are now back in their villages. Even if they refuse to cooperate further, he said, he can still use their sworn statements in court.

That includes potential cases against Glenn's former neighbors. Velasquez and Banegas were arrested during the raid and charged with human trafficking and other crimes. Authorities who searched their home next found several print-outs of Honduran legal codes, including sections dealing with the age of consent. The couple is currently behind bars in Honduras and awaiting trial.

"Everything they're saying is a lie," Velasquez's mother, Mercedes, told VICE News in March. "Nobody was kidnapped."

Mercedes, 73, lives around the corner from the compound. She says she taught Martina, Glenn's first "wife," how to cook beans.

"They haven't done anything bad," she said. "It was done without malice."

Other neighbors and shopkeepers told VICE News they'd never met the gringo. They'd only watched his red Toyota roll in and out of his compound. One family said they'd heard "Arab music" blaring from the compound in the wee hours, but nothing more.

Christopher Glenn is the first person prosecutors in Honduras have accused of a new variant of human trafficking crime created there in 2012: servile marriage. He may never face a Honduran judge, however. According to interviews and court documents, the FBI is trying to secure its own additional indictment against Glenn for engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. If Glenn were convicted on such a charge in the US and served time for it on top of his espionage sentence, it's unclear if Honduras would still request his extradition.

Glenn "denies ever being sexually involved with minors" in his pleadings. He also denies any belief "that he can marry multiple wives under Islamic religion."

As of March, Glenn's compound was shuttered and empty. The only sign of previous habitation was a hen. It appeared to have tangled itself in the razor wire atop the cinderblock wall and died.

* * *

After his arrest, prosecutors allege, Glenn planned a jailbreak.

According to court records, interviews, and e-mails obtained by VICE News, Glenn was initially held in Palm Beach County Jail instead of the federal prison in Miami because it was closer to the site of his hearings. On the evening of September 19, 2014, a jail watch commander received a phone call from the FBI. An agent said that a jailhouse informant had warned that Glenn was plotting an escape. The alleged plan was to fake an illness, get transferred to a local medical facility, sneak out to safe houses, obtain fake travel documents, then flee to the Middle East.

The FBI agent was worried, however, that placing Glenn in lockdown — isolating him in his own cell under close watch — would effectively reveal the identity of the informant. So jail administrators simply mandated that Glenn be escorted by a tactical unit whenever he left the premises.

Glenn "categorically denies" any escape plot in his pleadings, calling it "absurd and patently false." He says an informant could've easily learned of his background from press coverage, then concocted the tale to curry favor with the authorities.

A spokesman for the US Marshal's Service said Glenn was transferred to the federal prison in Miami in February.

* * *

At a hearing for Glenn on March 4, 2014 in West Palm Beach, a man named Yarb Al-Ethary — initials: Y.A.E. — appeared in the courtroom. US Border Patrol agents arrested the 28-year-old Iraq-born New Zealander after the hearing. He agreed to an interview with the FBI, who summarized it in an affidavit.

Ethary said he considered Glenn a "close friend," and told agents he visited the Comayagua compound in 2013. (It was Ethary's name Glenn used to purchase the land.) While there, Ethary observed Glenn sharing a bedroom with girls, but he assumed they were over 18. Ethary was held for several months as a material witness in Glenn's case, then deported to New Zealand on an expired visa.

On March 13, 2014, the FBI arrested Glenn's then-wife, Khadraa Adeeb, in West Palm Beach. The bogus documents she and Glenn had submitted in 2007 to secure her naturalization were coming back to haunt her.

Adeeb had become a US citizen and enlisted in the US Army, and was training to serve as a petroleum laboratory specialist. She was indicted on several naturalization fraud charges, and in August she pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy count. She was sentenced to time served, plus one year of supervised release. Court files don't reveal whether she testified against her now ex-husband, who, according to a judge's pretrial detention order, she believed was "cheating on her." She filed for divorce against Glenn in October, and it was finalized in December. Her attorney declined to make her available for an interview with VICE News.

* * *

Earlier this month, Glenn changed the story he'd told authorities. He insisted in new court filings that he "never intended" to steal the files, and never shared them with anyone. The Department of Justice disputes both accounts, arguing that his deeds could "cause serious damage to national security."

He admitted he burned an unauthorized DVD copy of the base commander's e-mail account, but only out of "an abundance of caution" in case the commander, who was transferring to Virginia, asked for it later. Glenn claimed he meant to shred the DVD the following week, but mislabeled it and failed to do so.

Assistant US attorney Ricardo Del Toro countered in a filing that Glenn's new claims "defy logic and common sense." The narrative failed to explain why Glenn copied only attachments related to the Middle East, then took the DVD to his home, then copied the files onto a hidden, encrypted compartment, then failed to return them.

Del Toro also accused Glenn of trying to tamper with evidence. The day after Glenn's arrest, he called his mother from a phone in Palm Beach County Jail and asked her to transmit a message to one of the girls still at the compound to disconnect his Synology device.

"I've got some pictures of me and Kadra [sic] that are private and I think they are gonna look through [them]," he reportedly said.

Disconnecting it, Del Toro wrote, would have "made it more difficult for law enforcement forensic experts to remotely access the device." Glenn claimed he was referring to a different device, and argued that if he had really wished to tamper with it, he would've had it destroyed.

The assistant US attorney wrote that the totality of what Glenn did "was not a single mistake, but rather an elaborate pattern of willful and egregious criminal acts spanning several years."

Del Toro conceded that it's "unclear" whether Glenn shared the stolen files with an agent of a foreign power, but such "would be a reasonable inference. Why else would he continue to lie about his crimes?"

Del Toro has asked that Glenn serve 11 years for his crimes, but a 19-year-old Honduran girl named Sinia says she hopes he doesn't. Sinia was one of the two girls inside the compound when police raided it. Glenn called her his "wife" in a court document filed July 28, adding that they "remain committed to each other." Glenn cited a letter [pdf below] that Sinia had purportedly written to the federal judge to request leniency for her husband.

"We're not married under Honduran laws but we have a religious marriage document," Sinia wrote. "We have a daughter which I have to take care of…. It has not been easy to overcome all of this all by myself with a little girl and without food, without a job, and without a house. Thank you for everything Mr. Judge, and God bless you always."

UPDATE — August 6, 2015:

When Christopher Glenn appeared before a judge on July 31, he submitted his own "Letter of Apology" to the court.

"Never in my wildest nightmare did I ever dream to discredit myself or the US Government," he wrote. He added that he'd already "suffered" by spending most of the last 17 months in solitary confinement.

According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, US District Judge Kenneth Mara said at the hearing that betraying one's country is "despicable," and that Glenn "did it either for profit or because he wanted to hurt the United States." Mara sentenced Glenn to 10 years in prison. Under Glenn's plea agreement, he cannot appeal the sentence.

On August 3, the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida charged Glenn with a sex crime. The offense is "traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with another person." In an affidavit attached to the criminal complaint, an FBI agent tells the story of "Victim A," who appears to be 16-year-old Martina. Almost all the details are the same: The girl came from a poor, rural background and couldn't read or write; she was recruited by Velasquez and Glenn in her village, made to "marry" Glenn in a staged ceremony, and was given "vitamins" until she blacked out.

Some of the pills found during the raid of Glenn's compound were tested by the DEA, the agent said, and found to be "promethazine and clonazepam," which "can be used as sedatives."

During the year or so that Victim A was Glenn's "wife," the agent said, she "developed feelings for Glenn and believed that she loved him." The agent added that sometimes she "was fine having sex with Glenn, other times she did not want to," but "always complied," believing the marriage contract was valid and that having sex with Glenn was her "duty."

The agent adds that Glenn gave the girl's family "a significant amount of money," enabling them to build an addition onto their house and obtain electricity and plumbing services.

In fact, the agent claimed, FBI forensic analysts looked through Glenn's Synology device — the one seized during the raid — and found photographic evidence that he paid the girl's family 200,000 lempiras (about $10,500).

That's not all they found on the device. According to the FBI, the analysts also found images and videos of "child pornography and child erotica" showing "minor females." Some of this material was "sexually explicit," while some wasn't. One series of videos from May 27, 2012 showed "Victim A" in a bathtub in a Honduran hotel room.

The FBI said that Glenn had flown from Miami to Tegucigalpa on May 19, 2012, and was staying at the InterContinental Hotel there on the same date the videos were shot.

In its affidavit, the bureau cites a legal precedent to explain why it has listed all these facts: "The Government does not have to prove that the Defendant actually engaged in a sexual act with a person under 18 years of age, but must prove that he traveled with the intent to engage in such conduct."

Glenn is scheduled for a hearing on this charge on August 6.

Mateo Galo, the Honduran prosecutor, told VICE News he considers the charge inappropriate. What Glenn did, he said, was befriend his Honduran neighbors and conspire with them to run a human trafficking ring, and the Americans' charge doesn't capture that.

"For that reason," Galo said, "the arrest warrant against Glenn [in Honduras] will remain in effect."

Follow Nicholas Phillips on Twitter: @NPPeriodista

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Letters from Glenn's mother and Sinia: