Tripoli Man Pleads Guilty to Distributing and Possessing Child Pornography

A man who distributed and possessed child pornography pled guilty on Friday, June 20, 2025, in federal court in Cedar Rapids.  

At the plea hearing, Austin Kingsbury, age 23, from Tripoli, Iowa, admitted that between August 2022 and June 2023, he distributed visual depictions of child pornography.  Between December 2022 and June 2023, Kingsbury possessed child pornography, including of prepubescent children, on his cellular telephone.

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.”

Sentencing before United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams will be set after a presentence report is prepared.  Kingsbury remains in custody of the United States Marshal pending sentencing.  Kingsbury faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years’ imprisonment and a possible maximum sentence of 40 years’ imprisonment, a $500,000 fine, $62,200 in special assessments, and a lifetime term of supervised release following any imprisonment.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Devra T. Hake and Dillan Edwards and was investigated by the Department of Homeland Security, the Tripoli, Iowa Police Department, the Bremer County, Iowa Sheriff’s Office, the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Police Department, the Anchorage, Alaska Police Department, and the Alaska State Troopers Technical Crimes Unit.  

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.  The case file number is 24-CR-2049.  Follow us on X @USAO_NDIA.