Durant Resident Sentenced For Possession Of Child Sexual Exploitation Material

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Ricky Wayne Banks, II, age 34, of Durant, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 120 months in prison for possessing sexually explicit material involving a minor.

The charges arose from investigations by Homeland Security Investigations and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

On August 25, 2022, Ricky Wayne Banks, II, pleaded guilty to Possession of Certain Material Involving the Sexual Exploitation of a Minor.  According to court documents, various CyberTips were received from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Child Exploitation Crime Centre (NCECC) regarding suspected activity involving minor children.  During the investigation, Agents obtained and executed search warrants and found Ricky Wayne Banks, II, to be in possession of sexually explicit materials involving minor children.

The Honorable Ronald A. White, Chief Judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, presided over the hearings in Muskogee.  Banks will remain in custody of the U.S. Marshal pending transportation to a designated United States Bureau of Prisons facility to serve a non-paroleable sentence of incarceration.

Assistant United States Attorney Edith A. Singer represented the United States.

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.justice.gov/psc.  For more information about internet safety education, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc and click on the tab “Resources.”

If you have information about the physical or online exploitation of children, please call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov.  You can also contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE–LOST (1-800-843-5678) or submit a tip online at report.cybertip.org.