Skip to main content
Press Release

Lubbock Man Sentenced to 27 Months in Federal Prison for Sending Obscene Material to Texas DPS Special Agent Posing Online as a 13-Year-Old Female

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Texas

LUBBOCK, Texas — A 30-year-old Lubbock, Texas, man, Justin Boyet Johnson, was sentenced on Friday by U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings to 27 months in federal prison, following his guilty plea in January to an indictment charging one count of attempted transfer of obscene material to a minor, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.

Johnson must surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on May 6, 2016.

According to documents filed in his case, on May 15, 2015, Johnson engaged in a series of communications, via texting and emailing, with a person he believed to be a 13-year-old girl who represented that she lived in Lubbock.  This “girl,” who was actually a special agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety, acting in an undercover capacity, had posted an online advertisement stating she was bored and looking for something to do.  Johnson expressed his sexual interest in the girl and emailed her a sexually explicit photograph of himself.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative, which was launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the 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 sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.  For more information about internet safety education, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ and click on the tab “resources.”

The case was investigated by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven M. Sucsy was in charge of the prosecution.

# # #

Updated April 5, 2016

Topic
Project Safe Childhood