JACKSONVILLE, FL—United States District Judge Marcia Morales Howard has sentenced Samuel Franklin Crews (32, Lake City) to seven years and eight months in federal prison for knowingly receiving images and videos of child pornography over the Internet. He has been in custody since his arrest on December 31, 2013.

According to court documents, an FBI agent in Jacksonville began an undercover investigation to identify individuals in that area that had access to and/or were trading images and videos depicting child pornography over the Internet. The agent determined that a computer in the Lake City area was hosting images of child pornography using a peer-to-peer file sharing program. The agent was able to download several videos depicting child pornography from this computer. The subscriber information was traced to Crews’s Lake City residence.

Law enforcement officers executed a federal search warrant at Crewss residence and seized his computer. Crews told the agents, among other things, that he had come across child pornography using a file sharing program on the Internet and became “curious,” he had searched for and downloaded more child pornography using certain search terms, and he knew that viewing such material is harmful to children. Subsequent analysis of Crews’s computer revealed that it contained 124 images and 10 videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, and the Gainesville Police Department. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.

This is another case 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 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.