Lockesburg Man Gets 30 Years for Child Pornography

Texarkana, Arkansas – A Lockesburg man was sentenced to 360 months in federal prison for receiving child pornography.

Nathan Karl Thomas, 25, was also ordered to pay $3,163.96 in restitution after being found guilty of two counts of Receipt of Child Pornography.

Thomas was sentenced by the Honorable Susan O. Hickey in the United States District Court in Texarkana.

According to court records, the York Regional Police Special Victims Unit in Canada initiated an investigation in 2014 into the distribution of child pornography. A Canadian citizen had uploaded images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct to his computer, and law enforcement officers in Canada learned that the images were sent from an IP address associated with a residence in Texarkana, Texas.

Federal law enforcement officials in Texas identified the user of the IP address and executed a search warrant at Thomas’s residence in Lockesburg, Arkansas, in December 2014.

During the search, Thomas’s cell phone and other electronic communication devices were seized and examined. The forensic examination of Thomas’s phone resulted in the recovery of Kik Messenger chat logs between Thomas and a minor female that contained sexually explicit conversations as well as photographs of the minor female engaged in sexual poses.

In addition to the images recovered from Thomas’s phone, forensic examiners discovered a video depicting an adult female sexually abusing a two-year-old male. The adult female, Haidy Branson, was identified and prosecuted in the Eastern District of Texas for producing the video. Branson is serving a 21-year sentence in the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Thomas pleaded guilty to an information in March of 2016.

This case was investigated by the Texarkana Child Advocacy Center, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Arkansas State Police Cybercrimes Unit, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Arkansas Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce. Assistant United States Attorneys Kyra Jenner and Ben Wulff prosecuted the case for the United States.

Nathan Karl Thomas will serve 360 months in federal prison followed by ten years of supervised release for his crimes.

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