Project Safe Childhood
Lee's Summit Man Sentenced for Child Porn
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – David M. Ketchmark, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Lee’s Summit, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for possessing thousands of images and videos of child pornography that he downloaded from the Internet.
Donald E. Swartz, 45, of Lee’s Summit, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian C. Wimes to 67 months, or five-and-one-half years, in federal prison without parole. In addition, he was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution.
On March 23, 2012, Swartz pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.
In April 2007, the Independence, Mo., Police Department received a CyberTipline Report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for Swartz. The CyberTipline report also included a complaint filed by a woman who claimed Swartz met young girls off the Internet for sex and trafficked in child pornography.
In response to this CyberTipline report, detectives conducted a residence check, during which two computer hard drives and CDs were seized and Swartz was placed under arrest.
The computer media was examined by the Heart of America Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory. The computer forensics examiner located 4,457 still images of child pornography and 70 videos of child pornography. Of these images, 46 depicted acts of bondage and 11 depicted acts of bestiality. These images were a sampling of those located on the computer media. There were over 30,000 images actually on the computer media. There was also evidence obtained demonstrating that the defendant utilized a peer-to-peer file-sharing program.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia L. Cordes. 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 launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc . For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources."
