Brownsville Resident Sentenced to 51 Months in Prison for Possession of Material Depicting the Sexual Exploitation of a Minor

PITTSBURGH, PA - A resident of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced in federal court to 51 months’ imprisonment, 10 years of supervised release, and has been ordered to pay $28,000.00 in restitution on his conviction of possessing material depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor, United States Attorney Eric G. Olshan announced today.

United States District Judge Cathy Bissoon imposed the sentence on Karl D. Lutes (52) of Brownsville, PA.

According to information presented to the court at the time of Lutes’s guilty plea, Lutes had been sharing images over the Internet which depicted the sexual exploitation of minors. He was identified through an investigation undertaken by agents of Homeland Security Investigations. On February 11, 2020, agents executed a search warrant at Lutes’s residence and found him in possession of hundreds of videos and still images in computer graphics files depicting the sexual exploitation of minors, some of whom had not yet attained the age of 12 years.

Prior to imposing sentence, Judge Bissoon stated that a sentence that included 51 months in prison served to protect the public, to provide for just punishment, and to afford Lutes with needed rehabilitation. Judge Bisson further highlighted that the submitted Victim Impact Statements provided a view of the real harm to children stemming from crimes involving their sexual exploitation.

Assistant United States Attorney Carolyn J. Bloch prosecuted this case on behalf of the government.

United States Attorney Olshan commended the Homeland Security Investigations for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Lutes.

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.justice.gov/psc.