Stanislaus County Resident Sentenced to More Than 11 Years in Prison for Receipt of Child Pornography

FRESNO, CA—United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced that today United States District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill sentenced William Alonzo Jones, 29, of Keyes, to 11 years and three months for his conviction for receipt of child pornography. The prison term will be followed by 15 years of supervised release during which Jones will be required to register as a sex offender, participate in sex offender treatment, and his access to minors, computers, and the Internet will be restricted.

This case was the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney David Gappa prosecuted the case.

According to court documents, On February 8, 2008, an FBI agent in New Jersey detected that Jones was making numerous images of child pornography available through the LimeWire file-sharing program. When a search warrant was executed at Jones’s residence on July 23, 2008, agents located and seized a computer that contained hundreds of images of child pornography. Jones admitted that he had acquired the images through peer-to-peer file-sharing programs. Jones’s sentence was enhanced due to the volume and nature of the material involved in the offense.

Jones has been in custody since his guilty plea on April 23, 2010.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC mobilizes federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov or call the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California and ask to speak with the PSC coordinator.