Cleburne Woman Sentenced to 720 Months’ Imprisonment for Producing Child Pornography

DALLAS — A Cleburne woman, Linzi Ladawn Shifflett, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle to 720 months in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release, following her guilty plea to two counts of production of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox of the Northern District of Texas.

Shifflett, 29, has been in custody since October 2016.    

According to the plea agreement factual resume and information presented at the sentencing hearing, from at least February 25, 2016 through September 28, 2016, Shifflett molested a four-year-old minor child who was in Shifflett’s custody and took sexually explicit photographs and videos of the child. Shifflett then sold the child pornography for nominal amounts of money to a man in Florida. As a part of the sentence, the Court ordered Shifflett to pay $194,815.17 in restitution.

Michael Eugene Williams, the man in Florida who paid for the child pornography, is being separately prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.  He has pleaded guilty to one count of sex trafficking of a child.  His sentencing hearing is currently scheduled for January 29, 2018.       

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood leverages federal, state and local resources to better investigate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children.  Project Safe Childhood also prioritizes identifying and rescuing victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.  For more information about internet safety education, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ and click on the tab “resources.”

The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Cleburne Police Department in Texas, and the Jacksonville Police Department in Florida.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie L. Hoxie prosecuted.

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