East St. Louis Man Sentenced For Failure To Register As A Sex Offender

Anthony J. Jones, a 50-year old, Illinois, man was sentenced on March 17, 2016, in federal district court in East St. Louis, Illinois, on one count of Failure to Register as a Sex Offender, violating the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, James L. Porter, announced today. Jones was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, to be followed by 10 years of supervised release, and ordered to pay a $100 special assessment.

The violation occurred between November 2014 and April 21, 2015, when Jones, a sex offender, moved from Tennessee to East St. Louis, Illinois, without registering as a sex offender there. Jones was aware that he was required to either update his sex offender registration in Tennessee to reflect this change of address, or register as a sex offender in Illinois. Jones was convicted on September 9, 1998, in St. Louis County, Missouri, of Attempted Sexual Abuse, which required him to register as a sex offender thereafter.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individual’s 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."

The case was investigated by the United States Marshals Service and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Daniel T. Kapsak.