Carroll County Man Pleads Guilty to Distributing Child Pornography
Possessed Over 900,000 Images of Child Pornography

BALTIMORE, MD—Brian Furches, age 37 of Manchester, Maryland, pled guilty yesterday to distribution of child pornography.

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Innocent Images Unit.

According to Furches’ plea agreement, on November 27, 2009, Furches provided an undercover law enforcement officer, whom he believed to be a collector of child pornography, access to his file share program folders, which contained over 900,000 images and/or video files available for others to download. The undercover officer downloaded 471 files of child pornography, including images documenting adult males sexually abusing an infant girl and a girl less than 5 years old.

A federal search warrant was executed at Furches’ residence on January 22, 2010. Since 1995, Furches had sought and collected over the Internet images depicting the sexual exploitation of minor children as young as newborns and toddlers. Furches had amassed a collection of adult and child pornography in excess of two million images and videos, which he shared with others in order to obtain additional pornographic images and videos.

Furches admitted that he has a sexual interest in children and frequently has neighborhood children, who range in age from 6 to 14, with the permission of their parents, in his home to play video games. Furches admitted that he has taken videos of the children wrestling.

As a result of his guilty plea, Furches will be required to register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

Furches faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison for distribution of child pornography. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake has scheduled sentencing for January 4, 2011 at 9:15 a.m.

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. Details about Maryland’s program are available at www.justice.gov/usao/md/Safe-Childhood/index.html.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI's Innocent Images Unit for its work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Bonnie S. Greenberg and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney LisaMarie Freitas, assigned from the Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, who are prosecuting the case.