Bellevue Man Sentenced to 15 Years for Producing Child Pornography

United States Attorney Deborah R. Gilg announced that Mark A. Roble, 52, of Bellevue, Nebraska, was sentenced in federal court in Omaha for producing child pornography. The Honorable Laurie Smith Camp sentenced Roble to 15 years in prison. There is no parole in the federal system. After his release from prison, Roble will begin a 15-year term of supervised release.

On June 10, 2011, members of the FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force including officers of the Bellevue Police Department and the Nebraska State Patrol served a search warrant looking for evidence of child pornography on Roble’s residence in Bellevue. A forensic preview of the computer identified 2,000 videos of child pornography. Small cameras were concealed in Roble’s bathroom. A closer review of the evidence revealed images of a child first at 8 years of age and again at 14 using the toilet and shower. The minor was unaware of being taped.

Roble admitted placing the cameras in a position to record the child in the bathroom and shower when the child was likely unclothed. He admitted to collecting child pornography since the early 1990s.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

This matter was investigated by the Omaha FBI’s Cyber Crime Task Force (CCTF), of which the Nebraska State Patrol is a partner. The Omaha CCTF is a multi-jurisdictional task force consisting of eleven federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies from Nebraska and Iowa. The mission of the Omaha CCTF is to investigate and apprehend high technology criminals and to protect our communities by preventing high technology crime and national security threats involving computers and computer networks. The Omaha CCTF was established on the premise that the capabilities of law enforcement agencies to investigate computer and high technology related crimes are enhanced in a task force setting involving the sharing of resources and expertise.