Federal judge sentences Fresno man for receiving, distributing child pornography
A Fresno man was sentenced Monday to 11 and a half years in prison by U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd for receipt and distribution of child pornography.
As part of his sentence, Steven Dale Jones, 43, will also be under supervised release for 20 years during which Jones’s access to minors, computers, and the internet will be restricted.
He will also be required to register as a sex offender. A hearing is scheduled for June 27, to address restitution to the victims.
Court records show, law enforcement investigators discovered Jones was sharing numerous child pornography files on a BitTorrent file-sharing network in December 2016.
He admitted to investigating agents that he had used file-sharing programs for several years to obtain child pornography.
Jones, who plead guilty to the charges, said he used a BitTorrent program and the TOR network to search for and download thousands of images of child pornography between January 2012 and April 2017.
This case was the result of an investigation by the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney David Gappa. The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section trial attorneys Alicia Bove and Nadia Prinz prosecuted the case.
