Collinsville Man Sentenced to 63 Months for Receipt and Possession of Child Pornography

A. Courtney Cox, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today that on November 20, 2009, PAUL LEE MISKELL age 43, of Collinsville, Illinois, was sentenced to a 63-month term of imprisonment following his pleas of guilty to the charges of receipt and possession of child pornography. MISKELL was also ordered to pay a fine of $12,500 and a special assessment of $300. Following release from imprisonment, MISKELL will serve a term of supervised release of ten years and he will be required to register as a sex offender. MISKELL was immediately remanded to custody.

MISKELL entered into a factual stipulation which acknowledged that he had purchased child pornography from a website located overseas in 2006. As a result of an international lead sent to the FBI, MISKELL’S home was searched in June, 2008, resulting in the recovery of child pornography from his computer.

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.

Information for the indictment was obtained in an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Collinsville Police Department, which has a detective detailed to the FBI’s Metro East Cybercrime Task Force.

The case was prosecuted by by Assistant United States Attorney Suzanne M. Garrison.