Wisconsin Man Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for Transporting Child Pornography

Contact: Craig M. Wolff
Assistant United States Attorney
Tel: (207) 780-3257

Portland, Maine:  United States Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II announced that Ryan Jeremiah Abbott, 23, of Plymouth, Wisconsin, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court by Judge Jon D. Levy to 5 years in prison and 7 years of supervised release for transporting child pornography. Abbott pleaded guilty to the charge on April 8, 2015.

According to court records, in October 2014, Abbott, who was in Wisconsin, sent eight email messages to the undercover email account of a Special Agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Maine. Three of the emails contained links to folders maintained on a foreign cloud storage service. The folders contained dozens of videos depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The other five emails attached video files also depicting children engaging in sexually explicit conduct. A search warrant later executed on Abbott’s email account showed that it was almost exclusively dedicated to the solicitation and exchange of child pornography.

The investigation was conducted by HSI. The 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, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute those who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. Click on the “resources” tab for information about Internet safety education.