Castle Creek Man Sentenced to 180 Months for Attempting to Receive and Receiving Child Pornography

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Chad Swartwood, age 41, of Castle Creek, New York, was sentenced today to serve 180 months’ imprisonment for receiving and attempting to receive child pornography, announced United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith and Kevin Kelly, Special Agent in Charge of the Buffalo Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

As part of his previous guilty plea, Swartwood admitted that from approximately December 2017 through December 2018, he operated several social media accounts on different platforms where he presented himself as a teenage female interested in online, sexual interactions with minor boys.  While impersonating a teenage female, Swartwood engaged people he believed to be minor boys in sexually explicit text conversations, sent sexually explicit images that he claimed to be of himself as a teenage female, and solicited sexually explicit images from minor boys.

Swartwood was previously convicted of the New York State felony of Sexual Abuse in the First Degree, an offense that involved a child less than 10 years of age.

In addition to the term of imprisonment, Senior United States District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy also imposed a 20-year term of supervised release, which will start after Swartwood is released from prison.  Swartwood also will be required to register as a sex offender upon his release from prison.

This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with assistance from the Broome County District Attorney’s Office, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Gadarian as part of Project Safe Childhood.  Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and is designed to marshal 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 https://www.justice.gov/psc.