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Press Release

Arizona Man Sentenced to Ten Years For Federal Child Sexual Exploitation Conviction in New Mexico

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE – Noah John Carney, 20, of Phoenix, Ariz., was sentenced today in federal court in Las Cruces, N.M., to ten years imprisonment for attempting to induce a minor to produce child pornography.  Carney will be on supervised release for ten years after he completes his prison sentence.  He also will be required to register as a sex offender.

Carney was arrested in Oct. 2013, on a criminal complaint charging him with inducing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct and attempting to have a minor produce child pornography.  In March 2014, Carney was indicted and charged with (1) attempting to produce child pornography, (2) attempting to receive child pornography, and (3) attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.  

On May 2, 2014, Carney entered a guilty plea to Count 3 of the indictment charging him with attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.  In entering his guilty plea, Carney admitted contacting the victim through an Internet game in Aug. 2013, and learning that the victim was 13-years-old.  During that “chat” and subsequent telephone, email and text communications, Carney engaged in sexually explicit conversations with the victim.  Carney asked the victim to send him nude photographs of her and sent her a nude photograph of him.   He also discussed plans to travel to New Mexico to have sex with the victim. 

The FBI performed a search of the victim’s cellular telephone and Kindle device, and found Carney’s nude photo and some of the “chats” between Carney and the child victim.  In mid-Sept. 2013, the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) joined the FBI’s investigation and an APD officer assumed the victim’s on-line identity and began communicating with Carney.  During an Oct. 3, 2013 “chat,” Carney asked the officer who was posing as the child victim for a sexually explicit photo, and on the following day, Carney sent the officer a video of an adult engaged in sexually explicit conduct.  Carney was arrested in Phoenix by the FBI on Oct. 24, 2013, and thereafter was transferred to New Mexico to face the charges in this case.

This case was investigated by the Las Cruces office of the FBI and APD, with assistance from the New Mexico Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory, and was prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Wright of the U.S. Attorney’s Las Cruces Branch Office. 

The case was filed as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, 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 http://www.justice.gov/psc/.

Updated January 26, 2015