Lockport Man Sentenced for Receiving Child Pornography

March 3, 2010 - BUFFALO, NY—Thomas Powers, 50, of Lockport, New York, who was convicted for receipt of child pornography on October 28, 2009, was sentenced to 108 months' imprisonment and five years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara, U.S. Attorney Kathleen M. Mehltretter of the Western District of New York announced today.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie P. Grisanti stated in court that the defendant had 16 disks containing child pornography. Powers admitted that he possessed over 2,000 images and a few videos of child pornography at his residence in Lockport, New York.

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.

The conviction was the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent In Charge James H. Robertson; the Lockport Police Department, under the direction of Police Chief Lawrence Eggert; and the Western New York Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory.