President of Florida Corporation Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for Money Laundering Related to Child Pornography Distribution
| U.S. Department of Justice January 14, 2011 |
WASHINGTON—The president and co-director of a Florida corporation was sentenced today to 33 months in prison for money laundering related to proceeds generated by the corporation through its distribution of child pornography, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance of the Northern District of Alabama. The corporation, Webe Web Corporation, also was sentenced today to five years of probation for child pornography charges.
Marc Evan Greenberg, 45, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., pled guilty in the Northern District of Alabama on April 21, 2010, to one count of money laundering. Webe Web pled guilty on April 21, 2010, to one count of conspiracy to produce child pornography and 16 counts of transporting child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge C. Lynwood Smith also sentenced Greenberg to three years of supervised release to follow his prison term and ordered Greenberg to pay $900,000 in restitution to six victims.
According to court documents, Webe Web was the registered owner of the website “www.childsupermodels.com,” which purported to be a child modeling website that promoted models 7 through 16 years old and their photographers. It contained hyperlinks to websites containing photographs of individual “child super models” featuring minor female children in various poses and wardrobes.
Greenberg and Webe Web admitted that the websites pertaining to 16 different children contained illegal images of child pornography. In some of the photos, the victims, all girls aged 8 to 15, were wearing underwear, lingerie, bathing suits, and other revealing outfits, and were posed in positions that constituted child pornography.
According to court documents, viewers of the websites could preview a certain number of images for free on the website homepage. If viewers wanted to join the website to access additional photographs, they could purchase a 30-day membership for approximately $30 per month. Greenberg and Webe Web admitted that the websites depicting the 16 victims generated approximately $1 million in revenue.
Webe Web also admitted that it promoted subscriptions to these individual sites through its free advertising website known as Babble Club. On Babble Club’s website, members could receive a free sample of images of the children. According to court documents, the website encouraged the purchase of subscriptions to the individual websites of the children, and hosted discussion boards and groups which were devoted to each individual website. Babble Club members made postings to the discussion boards, which included comments on specific images they liked, the type of clothing and poses they liked, and poetry written to the photographed child. Certain members posted expressions of fondness and devotion for a photographed child.
The vice president and co-director of Webe Web, Jeffrey Robert Libman, pled guilty on Sept. 15, 2010, to 16 counts of transporting child pornography and was sentenced on Dec. 17, 2010, to 108 months in prison.
According to court documents, the photographs of the 16 victims in this case were taken by Jeff Pierson, a former photographer based in the Birmingham, Ala., area. Pierson pled guilty in January 2007 to conspiracy to transport child pornography and transportation of child pornography.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jim Phillips and Daniel J. Fortune of the Northern District of Alabama, and Assistant Deputy Chief Alexandra Gelber of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).
This case was investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The Document and Media Exploitation Branch of the National Drug Intelligence Center provided assistance in ascertaining the revenue flow of this criminal enterprise to support analysis of and to identify the ill-gotten gains of the defendants.