FORT DODGE MAN ADMITS TO RECEIVING AND POSSESSING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
Contact: Peter Deegan
A man who downloaded child pornography using the Internet pled guilty on March 28, 2011, in federal court in Sioux City.
Michael Owings, age 54, from Fort Dodge, Iowa, was convicted of one count of receiving child pornography and two counts of possessing child pornography.
At the plea hearing, Owings admitted that, between March 2009 and October 2009, he used the Internet to download child pornography and possessed child pornography on two computers.
Sentencing before United States District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett will be set after a presentence report is prepared. Owings was taken into custody by the United States Marshal after the guilty plea and will remain in custody pending sentencing. Owings faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years’ imprisonment and a possible maximum sentence of 40 years’ imprisonment, $750,000 in fines, $300 in special assessments, and supervised release for 5 years to life following his imprisonment.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations.
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 10-3051.
