California Man Sentenced to 60 Months in Prison for Child Pornography Offenses

WASHINGTON – Elden Ray Cibart, 61, of Redding, Calif., was sentenced today to 60 months in prison and a lifetime term of supervised release for possession and receipt of child pornography, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Eastern District of California.

Cibart was convicted on Jan. 29, 2010, of one count of possession of child pornography and three counts of receipt of child pornography, after an eight-day bench trial presided by U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb in the Eastern District of California. The evidence introduced at trial showed that, beginning before 2001, Cibart downloaded and saved to his computers images and videos of child pornography from Internet news groups. On Jan. 18, 2006, after receiving information about Cibart’s activity, Redding police officers went to Cibart’s home to investigate. Police searched one of Cibart’s computers and found child pornography.

At sentencing, two witnesses testified that Cibart had previously molested them when they were young boys.

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 U.S. 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 case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Mi Yung Park of CEOS and Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurel White of the Eastern District of California. The case was investigated by the Redding Police Department, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations, and CEOS’s High Technology Investigative Unit.