Australian Citizen Sentenced for Possessing Child Pornography

HOUSTON—Christopher Mark King, 56, has been sentenced to 36 months in prison for possession of child pornography, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced today. King, a citizen of Australia and a legal permanent resident living in the Houston area, pleaded guilty to the charge December 1, 2011.

Today, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal handed King the three-year sentence and further ordered he serve 15 years on supervised release following completion of that term. King was also ordered to pay a $3,600 fine, and he will have to register as a sex offender. King may also face deportation as well.

The charge against King was the result of an investigation conducted by members of the FBI’s Innocent Images Task Force which focuses its attention on investigating offenses involving the exploitation of children via the Internet. The case was brought to the attention of the FBI by King’s employer Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), who discovered images they believed were child pornography when they were servicing King’s company-issued laptop. KBR notified the FBI, who conducted an additional investigation leading to the discovery of several hundred images of child pornography.

At his plea hearing, King admitted to possessing those images on an external hard drive he used to back up files from his KBR-issued laptop.

King, previously released on bond, was permitted to remain on bond and voluntarily surrender to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future.

This case, prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri L. Zack, was 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 the 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.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “Resources.”