FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel faces up to two decades behind bars after pleading guilty to possessing child sexual abuse material in Fort Lauderdale federal court Wednesday, according to prosecutors.
Edgar Ali Cerda, 49, of Cooper City, was arrested in 2021 after a tip from messaging app Kik that he was sharing child sexual abuse videos on the platform, according to a federal criminal complaint.
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According to that complaint, videos found both on Kik and on Cerda’s electronic devices depicted boys and girls — in one instance as young as 2 — being raped or otherwise sexually abused.
The complaint states that Cerda claimed he was only in Kik chat groups sharing the material for about two months because it was “something new” and said he “deleted everything when it became too much and the videos were too young.”
Cerda is set to be sentenced Feb. 28, according to prosecutors.