JACKSONVILLE, FL—United States Attorney A. Lee Bentley, III announces that Jason Dean Barnes (39, Jacksonville) has been arrested and charged by a federal criminal complaint with receiving child pornography over the Internet. He faces a mandatory minimum penalty of five years, up to 20 years, in federal prison. His detention hearing is scheduled for August 3, 2015.

According to the criminal complaint, on July 29, 2015, FBI agents and other law enforcement officers executed a federal search warrant at Barnes’s residence in Jacksonville. During an interview, Barnes admitted to searching for, downloading, and viewing child pornography, and that he has struggled with this addiction for a number of years. A forensic examination of Barnes’s laptop revealed images depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct that had been downloaded earlier that day.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.

It is another case brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.