Ashburn Man Sentenced to 78 Months’ Imprisonment for Receipt of Child Pornography

ALEXANDRIA, VA—Blake David Coleman O’Gara, 30, of Ashburn, Virginia, was sentenced this morning to 78 months’ imprisonment, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, after his guilty plea to receipt of child pornography.

Neil H. MacBride, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Valerie Parlave, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, made the announcement after sentencing today by United States District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, III.

According to court documents and court proceedings, O’Gara downloaded child pornography images and videos from various websites and a peer-to-peer file sharing program from October 2010 to October 2012. A search warrant executed on October 23, 2012, revealed that O’Gara had more than 600 images and videos of child pornography on his computers.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation Task Force.

Special Assistant United States Attorney Alicia J. Yass, a Trial Attorney with the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

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.justice.gov/psc.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/vae.