Long Beach doctor pleads no contest to distributing porn to a minor

By Brittny Mejia

Staff Writer

Nov. 1, 2018 5:10 PM PT

A Long Beach doctor pleaded no contest Thursday to one felony count of distributing pornography to a minor, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

A Superior Court judge ordered Jonathon Ellis to register for life as a sex offender and sentenced him to five years of formal felony probation, according to the district attorney’s office.

In April, officers with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Human Trafficking Unit arrested Ellis, 35, after they said he sent a lewd photograph to an undercover officer posing as a 16-year-old girl on the internet.

Ellis studied medicine in Henderson, Nev., and is a resident physician in Long Beach, the LAPD said earlier this year.

Under the plea agreement, Ellis must serve 90 days in county jail and attend 52 weeks of sex offender counseling, according to the district attorney’s office.

brittny.mejia@latimes.com

Twitter: @Brittny_Mejia

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Brittny Mejia is a Metro reporter covering federal courts for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she wrote narrative pieces with a strong emphasis on the Latino community and others that make up the diversity of L.A. and California. Mejia was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2021 in local reporting for her investigation with colleague Jack Dolan that exposed failures in Los Angeles County’s safety-net healthcare system that resulted in months-long wait times for patients, including some who died before getting appointments with specialists. She joined The Times in 2014.

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