United States Attorney James T. Jacks
Northern District of Texas

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2010 http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn/

FORMER UT-ARLINGTON GRADUATE STUDENT PLEADS GUILTY TO
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY OFFENSE

FORT WORTH, Texas — Sheldon Fernandes, 30, of Arlington, Texas, pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge John McBryde to one count of possession of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Fernandes faces a maximum statutory sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a lifetime of supervised release. He will be sentenced by Judge McBryde on July 9, 2010.

Fernandes has been in federal custody since his arrest in mid-December on a related federal complaint. At the time he was a graduate student at UT-Arlington.

According to plea documents filed, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents visited the Fernandes residence in Arlington based on a lead from the German Federal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA) through the ICE Attache office in Frankfurt, Germany. The lead concerned a target at the residence who was allowing access to child pornography via the Internet and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software. An examination of the computer and related storage media belonging to Fernandes was performed and agents discovered child pornography.

According to evidence presented at Fernandes’s detention hearing in December, during the execution of the search warrant on December 15, 2009, Fernandes initially voluntarily stated that he had never viewed or downloaded child pornography videos onto his personal computers. However, evidence was presented that more than 100 videos of child pornography were discovered on an external hard drive belonging to Fernandes.

Additional evidence at the detention hearing revealed that on the day following the execution of the search warrant, Fernandes, a citizen of India who is present in the U.S. on a student visa, was removed by ICE agents from a plane, bound for Paris, France, that he had boarded at DFW airport. Fernandes had purchased the plane ticket after the execution of the search warrant. He admitted using the Internet to obtain child pornography and directed agents to the child pornography on his computer.

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 U.S. 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

The case is being investigated by ICE and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex C. Lewis.

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