Bakersfield Man Sentenced to 17.5 Year Prison Term for Trafficking in Child Pornography

FRESNO, CA—Acting United States Attorney Lawrence G. Brown announced that late yesterday afternoon Senior United States District Court Judge Oliver W. Wanger sentenced MICHAEL HOLLIS, 50, formerly of Bakersfield, California, to 17.5 years in prison to be followed by 10 years of supervised release for his conviction of one count of receipt and distribution of images of child pornography. HOLLIS will also be required to register as a sex offender.

This case is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to Assistant United States Attorney David Gappa, who prosecuted the case, the Bakersfield FBI office received information from FBI offices in New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Texas that HOLLIS was making many images of known and suspected child pornography available through use of Limewire, a peer-to-peer file sharing program on the gnutella network. Agents executed a search warrant at his home on August 15, 2008, and seized a computer that was downloading images of child pornography from other computers on the Internet. HOLLIS was arrested and has been in custody ever since as a danger to the community and a flight risk. He pleaded guilty on December 1, 2008.

The court noted in imposing a lengthy term of imprisonment that the material in which HOLLIS trafficked was “alien, inhumane, despicable,” and some of the worst ever viewed by the court. When his computer was seized, it contained approximately 2229 still images and 244 video images of child pornography. HOLLIS also used the file-sharing program Bitlord to obtain and make available for sharing images of child pornography.

The prosecution was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood during Operation Valley Predator II. During this operation, which took place from July 27, 2008, through August 22, 2008, teams of law enforcement officers from more than 22 federal, state, and local agencies throughout the Central Valley made contact with 377 individuals, executed at least 19 state and federal search warrants, and arrested 61 persons on a variety of offenses ranging from child pornography crimes to failing to comply with state-mandated sex offender registration statutes. The operation resulted in approximately 17 new federal indictments with child sexual exploitation charges.