Man Pleads Guilty to Receipt of Child Pornography

BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Joseph E. Brown Jr., 33, of Buffalo, pleaded guilty before Chief U.S. District Court Judge William M. Skretny, to a felony charge of receiving child pornography. The charge carries a mandatory minimum penalty of five years in prison, a maximum penalty of 20 years, a fine of $250,000 or both.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron J. Mango, who handled the case, stated that between April 18, 2006 and June 8, 2009, Brown received images and videos of child pornography using Internet file sharing programs, including LimeWire. On June 13, 2008, a search warrant was conducted at Brown’s Buffalo home and his computer was seized. A forensic analysis revealed a total of 2400 images and 184 videos of child pornography stored on the computer.

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.

The plea was the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the FBI, under the direction of James H. Robertson, Special Agent-In-Charge. Additional assistance was provided by the Western New York Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, which conducted the forensic analysis of the defendant’s computer.

Sentencing is scheduled for November 19, 2010 at 9:00 a.m. in Buffalo, N.Y., in front of Judge Skretny.