Child porn trafficker sentenced to 13 years

SACRAMENTO — A Citrus Heights man was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for possessing and transporting child pornography across several states.

The case against 27-year-old Nathan Allen was the product of an extensive investigation by FBI field offices in Calverton, Maryland; Cleveland, Ohio; Richmond, Virginia; and Sacramento, and was undertaken as part of Project Safe Childhood.

PSC is a U.S. Department of Justice initiative established to increase federal prosecutions of violent sexual predators of children and to reduce the number of Internet crimes against children including child pornography trafficking. As a part of PSC, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has teamed with state and local agencies and organizations to increase law enforcement presence on the Internet, and to educate the public about safe Internet use.

According to court documents and Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurel D. White, who prosecuted the case, Allen pled guilty in September of this year to charges that he possessed and transported, on three separate occasions, child pornography. Evidence revealed that on those three occasions, undercover FBI agents from Maryland, Virginia and Ohio were allowed access to Allen’s computer and his shared collection of more than 54,000 images and videos of sexually explicit images of minors. Agents were then able to download sexually explicit images of children through the use of a file-sharing program Allen had installed on his computer.

A search warrant was ultimately obtained for Allen’s residence and, on Feb. 10, agents searched his apartment. An on-site preview of his computer revealed a large collection of videos and images depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, including those downloaded by the three FBI agents on Aug. 6, Nov. 25 and Dec. 5, 2008. A subsequent forensic analysis revealed more than 200,000 videos and images of child pornography, many of them depicting known and previously identified victims of child sexual abuse whose images were produced outside the state of California. When interviewed, Allen acknowledged distributing images of child pornography via the file sharing program he used and said he knew what he was doing was wrong.

In addition to his 160-month prison sentence, Allen was ordered to serve a 10-year term of supervised release upon his release from custody. He was also ordered to pay $7,500 in restitution to one of the victims depicted in the videos he possessed and made available to others. The defendant was also ordered to pay a $400 special assessment.
For additional information on the PSC initiative, please go to www.projectsafechildhood.gov or call the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California and ask to speak with the PSC coordinator.