Washington, D.C. – Patrick Pritchard, a 40-year-old former federal employee from Hollywood, Maryland, has been sentenced to 60 months in prison for possessing and transporting child pornography found on his work computer, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor and Charlton T. Howard III, Special Agent in Charge of the Washington, D.C., Field Office of the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (“NCIS”), jointly announced today.

The Honorable Richard J. Leon, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia, imposed the mandatory-minimum sentence earlier today. A federal jury convicted the defendant of the two charges on April 11, 2008. The evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Pritchard was a civilian government employee of the U.S. Naval Research Lab (“NRL”), located in Southwest Washington, D.C. On March 15, 2004, beginning at about 8:00 p.m., Pritchard used his work computer, which was on federal property, to access a Yahoo! “briefcase” containing images of child pornography. During the next hour, Pritchard emailed pornographic images to his personal Yahoo! email account. At least 10 of the images showed children under 18 years of age posing in a sexually explicit manner or engaging in sexual activity.

There were no eyewitnesses to Pritchard’s actions. However, security officials monitoring the Internet activity at NRL noticed the suspicious Internet activity, and his computer was eventually seized and analyzed. The resulting computer forensics confirmed the presence of child pornography on Pritchard’s work computer.

In announcing today’s sentence, U.S. Attorney Taylor and NCIS Special Agent in Charge Charlton T. Howard III praised the efforts of NCIS Investigative Computer Specialist Michael J. Wavada; NCIS Investigators Darrell Garris, Tammie Johnson, and Erin Hansen; and Dr. Barbara Craig, Director of the Armed Forces Center for Child Protection. They also commended the U.S. Attorney’s Office staff who assisted in the successful prosecution, including Phaylyn Hunt, Latoya Wade, Investigator Duncan Templeton, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick Yette, who prosecuted the case.