Former Whiteman Air Traffic Controller pleads Guilty to Attempting to Distribute Child Porn

March 18, 2010 - KANSAS CITY, MO—Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a former air traffic controller at Whiteman Air Force Base pleaded guilty in federal court today to attempting to distribute child pornography over the Internet.

Michael A. Worrick, 27, who was a serviceman at Whiteman Air Force Base at the time of the offense, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Greg Kays this morning to the charge contained in an Aug. 11, 2009, federal indictment.

An FBI agent working undercover in Richmond, Va., logged onto a peer-to-peer computer Internet network on Oct. 22, 2008, and entered a search term for child pornography. The undercover agent found files available for download from Worrick’s computer, including a three-minute movie that depicts a 10-to-11-year-old victim bound in various positions and subjected to various sexual contacts with an adult.

When investigators approached Worrick, the file-sharing program was running on his private desktop computer, listing apparent child pornography videos available for downloading. According to today’s plea agreement, Worrick had saved as many as 100 movies of child pornography on his computer, some of which included bondage and depicted children as young as three years of age, over a five-year period of time.

By pleading guilty today, Worrick also agreed to forfeit to the government the desktop computer and two hard drives that were used to commit the offense.

Under federal statutes, Worrick is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison without parole, up to a sentence of 20 years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $250,000 and an order of restitution. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Fincham. It was investigated by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Whiteman Air Force Base and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.