BOISE – James William Carr, IV, 23, of Mountain Home, Idaho, was sentenced today in United States District Court to 96 months in prison followed by 20 years of supervised release for possession of sexually explicit images of minors, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge also imposed a $5,000 fine and ordered Carr to forfeit assets used in the commission of the offense. He pleaded guilty to the charge on August 9, 2012.

According to the plea agreement, in April 2012, an Elmore County woman reported to the Boise Police Department that Carr was texting sexually provocative messages to her 14-year-old daughter. With the mother's permission, detectives assumed the child's identity and continued the text conversation with Carr. During the chats that followed, Carr sent “her” sexually explicit images of himself and close-up images of the genitals of another juvenile female. Carr repeatedly asked the “minor” to send him images of her bare private parts. The investigators contacted Carr at his place of employment, a fast food restaurant in Mountain Home, and seized his cell phone. A forensic examiner later found 35 images of another minor female (not the 14-year-old) on the phone, in which the girl was either fully clothed or in various states of undress, including full frontal nudity, and 14 close-up images of the minor female's genitals and pubic area.

The case was investigated by the Boise Police Department and the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, with assistance from the Idaho Department of Correction.

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, visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about internet safety education, visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”