DALLAS—A Garland, Texas, man, Jonathan Ramirez, 26, appeared yesterday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Renée Harris Toliver and pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldana.

Ramirez, who is in the U.S. illegally, faces a statutory penalty of not less than five years nor more than 20 years in federal prison, up to a $250,000 fine and up to a lifetime of supervised release. Sentencing is set for March 4, 2015, before U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade.

According to documents filed in the case, in June 2014, a Task Force Officer with the FBI, working online in an undercover capacity investigating the distribution of child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children, learned that a specific IP address, later linked to Ramirez, had made 78 files of child pornography available for sharing. Based in part on that discovery, the following month, law enforcement with the FBI Dallas Child Exploitation Task Force and the Garland Police Department executed a federal search warrant at Ramirez’s home. Agents seized an external hard drive and other media belonging to Ramirez. A review of the evidence revealed that the hard drive contained several child pornography videos.

Ramirez admitting using ARES P2P file sharing network to view and download images and videos of child pornography that he would then move to an external hard drive. He admitted that he had more than 175 videos and 50 images of child pornography on his computer and external hard drive.

The matter 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 FBI’s Dallas Child Exploitation Task Force and the Garland Police Department investigated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Camille Sparks is in charge of the prosecution.