Cody Wilson, the face of 3D printed guns, was just charged with sexual assault of a child

The face of the battle over 3D printed guns has some new legal trouble on his hands: the alleged sexual assault of a child.

Cody Wilson, the 31-year-old 3D printed firearm activist, was just charged Wednesday with the sexual assault of a minor that he met on SugarDaddyMeet.com in Austin, Texas. The underage girl recounted the encounter in an interview with Center for Child Protection counselors. While her exact age isn’t mentioned in the affidavit, the arrest warrant does say the victim is under the age of 17.

Court documents obtained by local ABC affiliate KVUE detail how Wilson met the underage girl in a Bennu Coffee parking lot in a vehicle with license plates that match the ones registered to Defense Distributed, the 3D gun group that Wilson founded. 

Wilson then took the girl to Archer Hotel in Austin and is accused of sexually assaulting her. Afterwards, he paid her $500, according to the victim.

The 3D gun activist had used the profile “Sanjuro” on the website and told the victim that he was a “big deal” prior to their meeting. Later in their conversation, he identified himself as “Cody Wilson.” Police say they have video of the initial encounter in the coffee shop parking lot. Wilson is not currently in custody.

Before today, Cody Wilson’s biggest legal challenge involved his longtime 3D gun activism. Cody Wilson founded Defense Distributed in 2012 and launched the Wiki Weapon Project in an effort to produce the world’s first completely 3D printed gun. As previously mentioned in Mashable’s 3D printed gun explainer, Cody Wilson once earned a spot on Wired’s list of the 15 most dangerous people in the world for his 3D printed gun activism.

Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed were back in the spotlight this year when Wilson attempted to publicly release 3D printed firearm blueprints after a settlement with the Trump administration lifted the ban on their release. The newly scheduled release of the blueprints was later blocked by a federal judge after a number of states sued.

Despite an ongoing case to release the blueprints publicly online, Wilson maneuvered around the legal ban last month by selling the 3D printed gun blueprints on flash drives.

Wilson also made headlines when he launched Hatreon, a crowdfunding site for those banned from Patreon, Kickstarter, and PayPal. It quickly became popular among those the site was targeting: alt-right figures and white supremacists such as Richard Spencer and The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin. Visa suspended the site’s operations in 2017.

Upon hearing the news from KVUE reporters, such as in the replies of the tweet above, Wilson’s supporters are arguing a conspiracy or “set up” to attack him over the hotly debated issue of 3D printed guns.