Indiana man sentenced to 20 years for receiving child pornography

INDIANAPOLIS - A local man who viewed child pornography at a public library was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to receiving child pornography. The sentence resulted from an investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); the Kokomo, Ind., Police Department and the Peru, Ind., Police Department.

William P. Smith, 27, of Kokomo was sentenced to 240 months in prison Sept. 29 in the Southern District of Indiana following his guilty plea to receiving child pornography.

On Jan.12, the Kokomo Police Department responded to the temporary facility of the Howard County Public Library after receiving a report that someone was viewing child pornography on the computer. Library officials indicated that a person in the library was using one of the computers to transfer files from the computer to a piece of loose digital storage media, such as a thumb drive.

Library staff directed police to Smith, who was using a computer in the library's computer lab. When the officers asked him what he had been doing in the computer lab, Smith stated that he was taking images out of his email and placing them onto his digital camera. The officers escorted Smith from the library and kept Smith's personal effects to prevent the possible destruction of potential evidence. The items included a digital camera containing a two gigabyte media card and eight CDs.

The following day, Smith granted permission for officers to search the items confiscated from him at the library. The items were found to contain images of child pornography. When confronted with this information, Smith confessed that he was aware of the child pornography images in his email, and he admitted that he regularly collected child pornography from the Internet.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker also imposed a lifetime of supervised release following Smith's release from prison. During the period of supervised release, Smith must register as a sex offender, engage in sex offender counseling, and is prohibited from having unsupervised contact with children, among other restrictions and requirements.

This investigation was part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers. Since Operation Predator was launched in July 2003, ICE agents have arrested more than 12,800 individuals.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

For the most up-to-date ICE information, sign up for ICE e-mail alerts. You may also visit us on Twitter and YouTube.

-- ICE --