Jefferson County Man Sentenced to 50 Years for Sexual Exploitation of a Child

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Brok Chase, age 29, of Fort Drum, New York, was sentenced today to serve a total of 50 years in prison as a result of his guilty plea to four counts of sexually exploiting a young child for the purpose of producing images of the abuse. 

The announcement was made by United States Attorney Richard S. Hartunian and Andrew W. Vale, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

United States District Judge Brenda K. Sannes also sentenced Chase to lifetime supervised release, to begin after his release from prison.  Chase would also be required to register as a sex offender upon his release from prison.

As part of his March 2016 guilty plea, Chase admitted that he sexually abused a child in Jefferson County beginning in 2014, when the child was 6 years old, and into 2015.  Chase also admitted that he began exploiting the child even earlier, before moving to New York.  Chase’s abuse of the child, and his visual depictions of the abuse, were discovered following the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at his Jefferson County home in September 2015.  The search warrant was authorized based on evidence gathered by the FBI in Louisville, Kentucky, indicating that Chase had been trading child pornography on the Internet.  Following execution of the search warrant, forensic analysis of Chase’s electronic devices found that, in addition to the images of his abuse of the child in Jefferson County, Chase possessed more than 9,000 images and 98 video files containing child pornography that he obtained from others through the Internet.

Chase was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Syracuse Resident Agency, Albany Division, and the FBI’s Louisville, Kentucky Child Exploitation Task Force, with assistance from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Command and New York State Police.  He was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Lisa Fletcher.

The joint effort is a part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys Offices, 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 identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.