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Press Release

Cedar Rapids Man Sentenced To 16 Years For Receiving Child Pornography

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Iowa

A man who received child pornography was sentenced today to sixteen years in federal prison.

Jason Smith, age 21, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, received the sentence after an October 7, 2013, guilty plea to one count of receipt of child pornography.  At the guilty plea hearing, Smith admitted that, between 2011 and 2013, he used the Internet to receive child pornography.  Information provided at the sentencing hearing indicated that defendant also posed as a female on the Internet, enticed minors to masturbate for him on webcam, and saved videos of these minors on his computer.

Smith was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade.  Smith was sentenced to 192 months’ imprisonment.  A special assessment of $100 was imposed, and Smith must also serve a ten-year term of supervised release.  He must comply with all sex offender registration and public notification requirements.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cedar Rapids Police Department.

This case was brought as part 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 the 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.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc.  For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”

Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.  The case file number is CR 13-54.

Updated February 19, 2015