Gainesville Man Admits to Exploiting Child in Federal Court, Sentencing Set for September
On June 16, Robert Lee Johnson III, 39, formally agreed to plead guilty to two counts of producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and in exchange federal prosecutors agreed to drop the other four CSAM production charges he was facing.
The plea agreement doesn’t set a specific sentence, but it reduces Johnson’s statutory maximum. Instead of facing a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison, he now faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison. Johnson could still be placed on supervised release for the rest of his life.
The indictment states that on six occasions, Johnson “did knowingly and intentionally employ, use, persuade, induce, or coerce a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct, and this depiction was produced using materials that had been shipped and transported in interstate and foreign commerce.”
According to federal court records, Alachua County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) deputies responded to the victim’s home in February 2025 after the victim reported that Johnson “was threatening to post videos online of [her] when she was a minor engaged in sexual activity with [him].”
The victim said that Johnson threatened to post the videos because “he thought she posted a negative comment about him on social media.”
In September 2025, following the service of a search warrant, Johnson was reportedly arrested on local charges of two counts of sexual battery against a minor, one count of lewd or lascivious battery against a victim 15 or younger, two counts of producing CSAM, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device. The outcome of his local case hasn’t been verified; it’s not searchable when typing Johnson’s name in court records.
Federal court documentation states, “The victim, who was eighteen at the time of the report, advised that she met [Johnson] when she was 14 and [he] was 33, and had a sexual relationship with him until after she turned 18.”
Court documents note that the victim later sent emails to federal prosecutors and Johnson’s defense “asserting that [they] did not engage in sexual activity until she was 16 years of age and that none of the recordings were made before she was 16 years of age. She further wrote that she consented to all the video recordings and that she initiated them; however, consent and knowledge of the minor victim’s age are not elements of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), the crimes the grand jury indicted as to the defendant on November 17, 2025.”
When questioned by police, Johnson "denied ever being in a relationship with the victim but admitted [to] engaging in sexual activities with her." He also admitted that he was pictured in one of the videos provided by the victim where she was 17. He acknowledged there were more videos and said, “just take me to jail.”
Chief District Judge Allen Winsor will sentence Johnson on Tuesday, September 1.
