Press Release
West Plains Man Sentenced to 15 Years for Child Pornography
For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Missouri
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A West Plains, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for receiving and distributing thousands of images of child pornography over the internet.
Steven Edward Moffis, 31, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool to 15 years and six months in federal prison without parole. The court also sentenced Moffis to a lifetime of supervised release following incarceration.
Moffis, who pleaded guilty on April 23, 2018, came to the attention of law enforcement during an investigation of individuals making child pornography files available to others on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing program. According to court documents, Moffis admitted that he had been addicted to child pornography for seventeen years. Moffis admitted to law enforcement officers that he had an uncontrollable problem with child pornography. Law enforcement located images and videos of child pornography on Moffis’s cellular phone.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ami Harshad Miller. It was investigated by the West Plains Police Department and the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force.
Project Safe Childhood
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals 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."
Updated September 11, 2018
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Project Safe Childhood
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