Granite City Man Pleads Guilty to Production and Possession of Child Pornography

Stephen R. Wigginton, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today that on September 29, 2010, JOSEPH EMIL KLUG, age 30 of Granite City, Illinois, pleaded guilty to a two-count indictment charging him with production and possession of child pornography. Production of child pornography is punishable by a term of 15 to 30 years of imprisonment. Possession of child pornography is punishable by a term of up to 10 years in prison. Both charges carry a fine of up to $250,000 and a supervised release term of five years to life.

A factual stipulation filed at the time of the plea indicated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant at KLUG’s Granite City home on November 23, 2009, as a result of a lead generated in another investigation. KLUG was present at the time of the search, and he agreed to speak with agents. KLUG told FBI agents that he had been struggling with an “addiction” to child pornography for five or six years. KLUG indicated that on the computers in his home, he possessed 80 to over 100 gigabytes of child pornography, with much of it consisting of images of boys aged 8 to 13 engaging in sexually explicit conduct. While using peer-to-peer file sharing software, KLUG would share his child pornography collection with others over the Internet.

Forensic examination of the computer equipment recovered from KLUG’s home revealed that he possessed approximately 59,000 still visual depictions and 12,000 videos of real minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Forensic examination also resulted in the recovery of images KLUG made by surreptitiously filming boys with a hidden camera.

Sentencing is currently scheduled for January 7, 2011.

Information for the indictment was obtained in an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Metro East Cybercrime Task Force.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Suzanne M. Garrison.