SACRAMENTO, CA—Robert M. Schaefer, 68, of Sacramento, was sentenced today by Chief United States District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. to eleven years and four months in prison for two counts of possession of child pornography, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.

According to court documents, from 2001 to 2010, Schaefer uploaded thousands of images of children being sexually exploited, including children under 10, to various file-sharing websites. He would surf the Internet looking for people seeking particular types of photos, which he would then supply from his extensive collection. His computers were seized once by the Sacramento Police Department in 2006, but Schaefer rebuilt his pornography collection and began collecting and sharing the materials again. The FBI seized his computers again on 2010 after the German Federal Police provided a tip that Schaefer had recently been uploading child pornography to a file-sharing site in Germany.

In sentencing the defendant, Chief Judge England noted that the volume of the defendant’s collection of child pornography was “astronomical” and that he had served as a niche supplier of child pornography to people seeking particular types of images from all over the world. Because of these facts, Chief Judge England ordered that the defendant serve ten years, the maximum allowable under the law, for his offense of possessing child pornography in 2010, to be followed consecutively by 16 additional months for his offense of possessing child pornography in 2006, for a total sentence of 136 months in prison. Upon release from prison, the defendant will be required to spend the remainder of his life under the supervision of a United States probation officer, and will be required to register as a sex offender.

This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Sacramento Internet Crimes against Children Task Force, and the Sacramento Police Department. Assistant United States Attorneys Matthew G. Morris and Brian A. Fogerty are prosecuting the case.

This 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 those who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. Click on the “resources” tab for information about Internet safety education.