kossuth county man sentenced for having child pornography
Contact: Peter Deegan
An elderly man who possessed child pornography was sentenced May 11, 2010, to two years in federal prison.
John Herman Opheim, age 73, of Burt, Iowa, received the sentence after a January 28, 2010, guilty plea to one count of possession of child pornography.
At the guilty plea, Opheim admitted that, between July 2007 and December 2008, he possessed child pornography on a computer at his home.
Opheim was sentenced in Sioux City by United States District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett. Opheim was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $100 was imposed, and Opheim must also serve a 5-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Kossuth County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
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 09-3034.
