KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Sugar Creek, Mo., man who is a prior child sex offender pleaded guilty in federal court today to attempting to distribute and receive child pornography over the Internet and to possessing child pornography.

Martin A. Cordry, 47, of Sugar Creek, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright to all three charges contained in a March 3, 2010, federal indictment. Cordry remains in federal detention pending his sentencing hearing.

By pleading guilty today, Cordry admitted that he attempted to both download and distribute child pornography over the Internet through a file-sharing program on his computer. Cordry also admitted that he was in possession of child pornography when law enforcement officers seized his computer and digital media.

According to court documents, Cordry was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 1994 for the rape and sodomy of a 7-year-old victim.

An Independence police officer, during the course of an undercover investigation, identified Cordry’s computer as listing child pornography files available to share through a file-sharing program. Officers executed a search warrant at Cordry’s residence on Dec. 11, 2008, and seized his computer, along with 50 CDs that contained child pornography, including approximately 200 movies of child pornography. Cordry told investigators that he downloaded child pornography approximately once a week. According to court documents, Cordry downloaded child pornography from the Internet while he was still on parole for his child sexual offenses and while he was still in group therapy for sex offenders.

Cordry also admitted that, between the time his computer was seized and his arrest on March 3, 2010, he acquired a new computer and used a file-sharing program to obtain additional child pornography. Investigators discovered more than 1,000 cartoon images of sexual assaults of children (including children in bondage) on an external hard drive, according to court documents, as well as 15 child pornography videos on Cordry’s second computer.

Under federal statutes, Cordry is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison without parole on each count of distributing and receiving child pornography, and a mandatory statutory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison without parole for possessing child pornography, up to 100 years in federal prison without parole. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Fincham. It was investigated by the Independence, Mo., Police Department.

Project Safe Childhood
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.

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