Waterloo Man Sentenced to 12 Years in Federal Prison for Second Conviction Involving Child Pornography

A man who possessed child pornography was sentenced on August 4, 2025, to 12 years in federal prison.

Forrest Rindels, age 69, of Waterloo, Iowa, received the sentence after a March 6, 2025, guilty plea to two counts of possession of child pornography.  At the plea hearing, Rindels admitted that, between 2021 and 2022, he knowingly possessed child pornography on a tablet and a micro-SD card.  He also admitted that he was previously convicted of receipt of child pornography in the Northern District of Iowa in 2016.

Rindels was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams.  Rindels was sentenced to 144 months’ imprisonment.  He was ordered to make $42,000 in restitution to 14 victims depicted in the child pornography he possessed.  He must also serve a five-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.   

This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Waterloo Police Department.

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 is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.  

The case file number is CR 24-2055.

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