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DALLAS — Noel Guest, 62, of Mabank, Texas, was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle to 240 months in federal prison, following his guilty plea in November 2016 to transportation and shipment of child pornography, announced Erin Nealy Cox, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
Guest has been in custody since his arrest in May 2016.
According to the factual resume filed in the case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating a specialized peer-to-peer file-sharing program (P2P) in an undercover capacity. This specialized P2P program functions as a closed network similar to Facebook, where users choose who to invite into their network and what to share with their invited contacts.
On May 13, 2016, a search warrant was executed at Guest’s residence in Mabank, Texas and agents seized several electronic devices. A forensic examination revealed that the electronic devices contained over 602 images of child pornography and 2 videos of child pornography. The examination also revealed that Guest chatted with other like-minded individuals on the P2P network to obtain their passwords for their shared materials and that he also traded child pornography with them by providing them with the password to his child pornography collections and that Guest made available approximately 4344 shared files of child pornography.
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 Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Plano Police Department investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Shane Read prosecuted.
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Janet Pearre
janet.pearre@usdoj.gov
214-659-8600