Minneapolis Man Sentenced for Distributing Child Pornography

MINNEAPOLIS—Earlier today in federal court in St. Paul, a 49-year-old Minneapolis man was sentenced for distributing 314 images and 94 videos of child pornography. United States District Court Judge Donovan W. Frank sentenced Ivan W. Tencate to 142 months on one count of distribution of child pornography. He was charged on September 1, 2010, and pleaded guilty on September 23, 2010.

In his plea agreement, Tencate admitted that between February 18, 2009, and March 11, 2010, he distributed via his laptop computer numerous images and videos depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. In addition, Tencate admitted distributing and receiving the pornography through the peer-to-peer computer file-sharing network known as Gigatribe.

According to a law enforcement affidavit filed in the case, investigators met Tencate on February 18, 2009, in an Internet chat room. During the following year, those investigators received child pornography from him. In an effort to avoid detection, Tencate used wandering Wifi from several Twin Cities area coffee shops. Nonetheless, he was arrested on March 11, 2010, at a coffee shop in south Minneapolis.

This case was the result of an investigation by the Minnesota Cyber Crime Task Force, which is sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Deidre Y. Aanstad.

Presently, the Justice Department is funding a study concerning the correlation between involvement in child pornography and the hands-on sexual abuse of children. A 2008 study (The Butner Study) published in the Journal of Family Violence found that up to 80 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for possession, receipt, or distribution of child pornography also admitted to hands-on sexual abuse of children, ranging from touching to rape.

The U.S. Department of Justice is committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children, particularly via the Internet. In Fiscal Year 2010, 2,235 defendants pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges, 2,222 of whom were sentenced to prison. In Fiscal Year 2009, 2,083 defendants were sentenced to prison on child pornography charges. For more information about these efforts, please visit the Department’s Project Safe Childhood website, at www.projectsafechildhood.gov.