Samuel Franklin Crews, Child Pornography, Florida 2014

Lake City Man Sentenced to 7 Years and 8 Months in Federal Prison for Receiving Child Pornography

Jacksonville, Florida – In a shocking case of online exploitation, Samuel Franklin Crews, 32, of Lake City, Florida, has been sentenced to seven years and eight months in federal prison for knowingly receiving images and videos of child pornography over the Internet. Crews was arrested on December 31, 2013, and has been in custody since then.

According to court documents, an FBI agent in Jacksonville began an undercover investigation to identify individuals in the area who had access to and/or were trading images and videos depicting child pornography over the Internet. The agent determined that a computer in the Lake City area was hosting images of child pornography using a peer-to-peer file sharing program. The agent was able to download several videos depicting child pornography from this computer. The subscriber information was traced to Crews’s Lake City residence.

Law enforcement officers executed a federal search warrant at Crews’s residence and seized his computer. Crews told the agents that he had come across child pornography using a file sharing program on the Internet and became “curious,” he had searched for and downloaded more child pornography using certain search terms, and he knew that viewing such material is harmful to children. Subsequent analysis of Crews’s computer revealed that it contained 124 images and 10 videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, and the Gainesville Police Department. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.

This case is another example of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.

Samuel Franklin Crews, 32, of Lake City, Florida, was sentenced to seven years and eight months in federal prison for knowingly receiving images and videos of child pornography over the Internet. He was arrested on December 31, 2013, and has been in custody since then. Crews’s exact criminal charges include knowingly receiving images and videos of child pornography over the Internet.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/lake-city-man-sentenced-more-seven-years-receiving-child-pornography-over-internet