Lassen County Man Sentenced for Producing Child Pornography

March 23, 2010 - SACRAMENTO, CA—United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced today that Senior United States District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. sentenced RONALD EUGENE BERNAL, 48, of Susanville, today to 15 years in federal prison followed by 20 years of supervised release for producing and possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. BERNAL is required to pay just over $63,000 in restitution to his victim and to register as a sex offender as provided under state and federal laws.

This case was the product of an investigation by special agents from the Sacramento Office of the FBI and the Lassen County Sheriff’s Department.

According to Assistant United States Attorney Laurel D. White, who prosecuted the case, BERNAL pleaded guilty in October of last year to charges he possessed and produced visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Evidence revealed that in May 2009, his wife reported to the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office that she had found a digital memory card that had fallen from her husband’s jacket pocket one morning. She viewed the contents of the memory card and told officers that she found sexually explicit images of her niece on the card. She said she believed BERNAL had taken the images because she could see a man’s hand and wristwatch in the images. She identified the hand and watch as BERNAL’s. At the time the images were taken, the niece was five or six years old. It appeared as though the pictures were taken in a bedroom in BERNAL’s Susanville home. A federal search warrant was obtained for the defendant’s computers, and when analyzed, BERNAL’s computers were found to contain other sexually explicit images of minors.

The investigation was undertaken as part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC). PSC is a United States Department of Justice initiative established to increase federal prosecutions of violent sexual predators of children and to reduce the number of Internet crimes against children including child pornography trafficking. As a part of PSC, the United States Attorney’s Office has teamed with state and local agencies and organizations to increase law enforcement presence on the Internet, and to educate the public about safe Internet use, thereby reducing the risk that children might fall prey to online sexual predators. For additional information on the PSC initiative, please go to www.projectsafechildhood.gov or call the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California and ask to speak with the PSC coordinator.