Brian Northup, Child Pornography Access, New York 2020

A 29-year-old Hudson man was sentenced to 42 months in prison for repeatedly accessing a child pornography website.

Brian Northup, 29, of Hudson, New York, was sentenced to 42 months in prison for repeatedly accessing a child pornography website available only through an anonymous Internet network.

The announcement was made by United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith and Thomas F. Relford, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

United States District Judge Mae A. D'Agostino also ordered that Northup serve 10 years of post-release supervision, which will start after Northup is released from prison.

As part of his guilty plea on December 11, 2019, Northup admitted that in 2015, he accessed 'Playpen,' an online forum through which registered users advertised, viewed, and distributed child pornography.

Images and videos shared through the site were highly categorized according to victim age and gender, and type of sexual activity depicted.

Before the FBI seized the Playpen website and shut it down, it was available only through an anonymous Internet network, which allowed users to access websites including Playpen without revealing their actual internet protocol address, geographic location, or other identifying information.

Northup admitted that he logged into Playpen in order to download child pornography content.

This case was investigated by the FBI with assistance from the Columbia County Sheriff's Office, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emmet O'Hanlon.

This case is prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndny/pr/hudson-man-sentenced-42-months-accessing-child-pornography