Jacksonville Man Pleads Guilty in Federal Court to Producing Child Pornography

JACKSONVILLE—Acting United States Attorney A. Lee Bentley, III announces that on October 2, 2013, James Daniel Kasper (29, Jacksonville) pleaded guilty to using a minor to produce images of child pornography. Kasper faces a mandatory minimum penalty of not less than 15 years and up to 30 years in federal prison. Kasper has been in custody since his arrest on March 20, 2013. A sentencing hearing has not yet been set.

According to court documents, in February 2013, law enforcement officers in Tennessee arrested a registered sex offender on child pornography charges, and an FBI agent accessed the individual’s email account. The agent discovered that several hundred emails had been exchanged between the arrested individual and others, many of which contained images and videos depicting child pornography. Another email account contained correspondence between the individual and numerous other email accounts, including one identified as the "ghostt4891” account. Further investigation revealed that the ghostt4891 account belonged to Kasper and that Kasper had sent images of child pornography to others via email and had uploaded them over the internet to a website whose server is outside of the United States.

According to court documents, on March 20, 2013, FBI agents and other law enforcement officers executed a federal search warrant at Kasper's apartment on Sunbeam Road in Jacksonville. During the search, agents seized a laptop computer and a thumb drive. Agents also contacted Kasper at his place of employment. When interviewed, he stated, among things, that while babysitting a 9-year-old minor child, he used his smartphone to produce sexually explicit photos of the child. After taking the photos, Kasper uploaded the images over the internet to a particular website and sent them to others via email. Kasper also stated that he used a peer-to-peer file sharing program to search for child pornography on the internet.

According to court documents, the thumb drive seized at Kasper’s residence contained at least 49 images of child pornography produced by Kasper that depicted the minor child.

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

It is another case 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.