Seneca Falls Man is Sentenced in Child Pornography Case

     ROCHESTER, N.Y. – U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Lawrence Higgins, 63, of Seneca Falls, N.Y., who was convicted of possession of child pornography and being a felon in possession of a firearm, was sentenced to 150 months in prison and 20 years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany H. Lee, who handled the case, stated that the United States Postal Inspection Service received information that Higgins was ordering DVDs depicting child pornography from an "International Company." From November 2008 to March 2011, the defendant made 11 purchases. The DVDs were delivered to an address located on State Street in Seneca Falls.

A search warrant was executed by Inspectors from the Postal Inspection Service on November 14, 2012. Higgins admitted to ordering the DVDs and to possessing thousands of images of child pornography and hundreds of hours of videos of child pornography on his computers and digital storage media. The defendant has a prior conviction for sexual abuse in the first degree and admitted to possessing a rifle and ammunition.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys= Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

The sentencing is the culmination of an investigation on the part of the United States Postal Inspection Service under the direction of Acting Inspector in Charge, Shelly A. Binkowski, Boston Division.