Woman Pleads Guilty to Receiving Child Pornography

BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Angie L. Jenkins, 35, of Lowell, Michigan, pleaded guilty before Chief U.S. District Court Judge William M. Skretny, to receipt of child pornography. The charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron J. Mango, who is handling the case, stated that in October 2009, Jenkins developed an online relationship with a 15-year-old minor victim through the online video game World of Warcraft. The relationship progressed into online chats, e-mails, and telephone calls. In the spring of 2010, the conversations turned sexual in nature and in late May 2010, the defendant told the victim that she wanted to travel to Buffalo so that they could engage in sexual activity. On June 11, 2010, Jenkins traveled from Michigan to Buffalo, met up with the victim, then 16 years old, and had sex in a parked car in a park in Amherst, NY. The relationship was discovered after the minor’s parents, upon reviewing his cell phone, noticed multiple calls from an out of state number. After learning that Jenkins traveled to Buffalo, the parents contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On August 31, 2010, the defendant was arrested at her home in Michigan and a computer was seized from her residence. A forensic examination revealed graphic images sent from the victim to the defendant at the defendant’s request.

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 plea is the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Richard W. Kollmar. Additional assistance was provided by the Western New York Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, which conducted the forensic analysis of the defendant’s computer.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 29, 2011, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. in Buffalo, N.Y., before Judge Skretny.