A former youth pastor from Southern California will likely spend the rest of his life in federal prison after receiving a 40-year sentence for exploiting children online and secretly recording minors through spyware. The case began with a 2025 airport search and widened into a disturbing reckoning over how he gained access to children at a Laguna Hills church.
Jacob Melvin Hart, 46, of San Juan Capistrano, was sentenced in Miami for secretly recording minors and directing children overseas to produce child sexual abuse material, as reported by Local 10. Customs officers found 33 illicit videos on his phone, including material involving girls as young as 10, while investigators also observed roughly 160 AI-generated images and videos depicting nude minors.
A federal court report shows Hart entered a guilty plea in the case after prosecutors accused him of using technology and online contacts to exploit children. The plea cleared the way for the sentence now keeping him behind bars for four decades…