Simon William Riley, Child Exploitation, North Dakota 2016

FARGO – A United Kingdom man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in the child exploitation of a 13-year-old Fargo girl.

Simon William Riley, 21, of Swansea, Wales, was sentenced by Judge Ralph R. Erickson to 12 years in prison on one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of advertising material involving the sexual exploitation of minors, and one count of receipt of child pornography.

Riley was also sentenced to serve 10 years of supervised release and ordered to pay $400 to the Crime Victims’ Fund.

The case came to the attention of law enforcement after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) notified members of the North Dakota Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force that a website on the Tor Network contained child pornographic images of a girl located in Fargo, North Dakota.

Subsequently, ICAC Task Force members identified the 13-year-old victim who told law enforcement that she sent the sexually explicit images to another female via Kik Messenger. In reality, this ‘female’ was Simon Riley, an adult male.

After Riley obtained these images, he posted advertisements on the website found on the Tor Network. The advertisement contained a link to a file-sharing site where other Tor users could access the images depicting the victim. Law enforcement determined that the victim’s images were accessed on more than 20,000 occasions by Tor users located throughout the world.

This case was investigated by the North Dakota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security – Homeland Security Investigations in Grand Forks, ND, as well as the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Fargo Police Department.

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

The ICAC Program is a national network of 61 coordinated task forces engaging in proactive investigations, forensic investigations, and criminal prosecutions.

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