Eagle Grove Man Sentenced to Over 28 Years in Federal Prison for Sexually Exploiting and Extorting a Child

A thirty-year old man who sexually exploited a child and then extorted the minor was sentenced to more than 28 years in federal prison on March 19, 2018.

Jason Marvets, age 30, from Eagle Grove, Iowa, received the prison term after pleading guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of extortion.  At the plea hearing, Marvets admitted that, between 2016 and 2017, he persuaded or coerced a child to send him sexually explicit depictions of herself.  In a plea agreement, he admitted that this child was 11 and 12 years old and that he threatened to distribute depictions of her in order to get more depictions of her.  In the plea agreement, he also admitted he obtained sexually explicit depictions from a 15-year-old child and threatened to ruin her life when she did not communicate with him.

Marvets was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Leonard T. Strand.  Marvets was sentenced to 344 months’ imprisonment.  He must also serve a seven-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.

Marvets is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Wright County Sheriff’s Office, the Webster County Sheriff’s Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the Michigan State Police. 

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.”          

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. 

The case file number is 17-CR-3034.

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