Former Whiteman Air Traffic Controller Sentenced for Attempting to Distribute Child Pornography

KANSAS CITY, MO—Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a former air traffic controller at Whiteman Air Force Base was sentenced in federal court today for attempting to distribute child pornography over the Internet.

Michael A. Worrick, 27, who was a serviceman at Whiteman Air Force Base at the time of the offense, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Greg Kays to seven years and six months in federal prison without parole.

On March 17, 2010, Worrick pleaded guilty to attempting to distribute child pornography over the Internet through a peer-to-peer file-sharing program on his computer.

An FBI agent working undercover in Richmond, Va., logged onto a peer-to-peer computer Internet network on Oct. 22, 2008, and entered a search term for child pornography. The undercover agent found files available for download from Worrick’s computer, including a three-minute movie that depicts a 10- to-11-year-old victim bound in various positions and subjected to various sexual contacts with an adult.

When investigators approached Worrick, the file-sharing program was running on his private desktop computer, listing apparent child pornography videos available for downloading. Worrick had saved as many as 100 movies of child pornography on his computer, some of which included bondage and depicted children as young as three years of age, over a five-year period of time.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Fincham. It was investigated by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Whiteman Air Force Base and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Project Safe Childhood

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.