Repeat Offender Sentenced To 121 Months For Possession Of Child Pornography

An Otsego man was sentenced today to 121 months in prison for possession of child pornography, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger of the District of Minnesota.

On Dec. 8, 2015, Frank Russell McCoy, 72, was found guilty of possession of child pornography after a two-day trial.  U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the District of Minnesota sentenced McCoy today and also ordered him to serve a 10 year term of supervised release.

According to the evidence presented at sentencing, for years, McCoy has written and distributed short stories describing extreme sexual abuse and other acts of violence perpetrated against very young children.  In 2013, he was convicted in the Middle District of Georgia of one count of transportation of obscene matters after sending one such story via the Internet to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI) undercover agent.  In Dec. 2013, while on bond pending appeal of that conviction, McCoy amassed a large numbers of computers and related equipment in his home in Minnesota that, a search requested by his U.S. Probation Officer revealed, contained dozens of videos of child exploitation.  Evidence at trial further demonstrated that though McCoy had installed forensic wiping software on his computers in order to destroy any evidence of child exploitation images, he had transferred the majority of those files onto a portable video player device just before the seizure. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine T. Buzicky of the District of Minnesota and former Trial Attorney Jeffrey Zeeman of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) prosecuted the case.  ICE-HSI and CEOS’s High Technology Investigative Unit investigated the case. 

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 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and 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.justice.gov/psc.

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