Elijah Fogle, Child Pornography Distribution, Pennsylvania 2013

A 22-year-old man from Charlotte, North Carolina, has been sentenced to five years in prison for distributing child pornography in Pennsylvania.

Elijah Fogle, 22, was sentenced to 60 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Petrese Tucker, who also ordered 10 years of supervised release and a $300 special assessment.

Fogle pleaded guilty on July 30, 2013, to charges of distribution of child pornography, receipt of child pornography, and possession of child pornography.

According to court documents, Fogle had amassed a collection of child pornography on his computer and a thumb-drive that included hundreds of images and videos of children being sexually abused. He also admitted to distributing and receiving child pornography images over the Internet by uploading them to a file-sharing website.

A special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, acting in an undercover capacity, signed into a ‘covert’ account on a private peer-to-peer network in February 2012 and engaged in an online chat with Fogle. During the chat, Fogle advised that he had folders to share that were on a flash drive and needed to be online for viewing.

The agent selected 19 video files and discovered child exploitation activity. A full forensic examination of Fogle’s laptop computer and thumb-drive was conducted during which 835 images and 362 videos of child pornography were recovered.

The majority of the collection depicts prepubescent and pubescent males, many of which are clearly under the age of 12 years. During an interrogation, Fogle admitted that he had sexually abused a 12-year-old boy from his neighborhood in North Carolina.

The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Tomika N. Stevens.

The case highlights the ongoing problem of child pornography and the need for law enforcement to crack down on those who distribute and possess these types of images.

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