Man Sentenced for Receiving Child Pornography

BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Joseph E. Brown, Jr., 33 of Buffalo, who was convicted of receiving child pornography on July 23, 2010, was sentenced to five years in prison and five years’ supervised release by Chief U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny. Brown was also order to pay $5,000 in restitution to one of the victims depicted in the child pornography he received.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron J. Mango, who handled the case, stated that between April 18, 2006 and June 8, 2009, Brown received images and videos of child pornography using Internet file sharing programs, including LimeWire. On June 13, 2008, a search warrant was executed at his residence and Brown’s computer was seized. A forensic analysis of the computer revealed a total of 2,400 images and 184 videos of child pornography stored on the computer.

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 individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

The sentencing was the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of James H. Robertson, Special Agent-in-Charge. Additional assistance was provided by the Western New York Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, which conducted the forensic analysis of the defendant’s computer.