cherokee man pleads guilty to uploading child pornography to internet
Contact: Peter Deegan
A western Iowa man who distributed child pornography on the Internet pled guilty on March 24, 2010, in federal court in Sioux City.
Lucian Siepka, age 56, from Cherokee, Iowa, was convicted of one count of transporting child pornography.
At the plea hearing, Siepka admitted that, in June 2009, he posted images of child pornography on an Internet website. In a plea agreement, Siepka admitted he also downloaded and saved images of child pornography on his computer.
Sentencing before United States District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett will be set after a presentence report is prepared. Siepka was taken into custody by the United States Marshal after the guilty plea and will remain in custody pending sentencing. Siepka faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years’ imprisonment and a possible maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, a $100 special assessment, and supervised release for up to life following any imprisonment.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation.
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 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.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 09-4066.
