Douglasville Man Sentenced to Federal Prison for Child Pornography Offense

ATLANTA, GA—RICHARD W. RODGERS, 42, of Douglasville, Georgia, was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr., to federal prison on a charge of receiving child pornography.

United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “Thanks to the work of an undercover FBI agent, this offender has been prosecuted for receiving more than 1,000 images and many videos of child pornography and making hundreds of those images available for others via the Internet. Today's sentence is a reminder to all those who consider this illegal conduct: child pornography offenders face serious consequences for their crimes."

RODGERS was sentenced to five years in prison to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to the charge on August 13, 2010.

According to United States Attorney Yates and information presented in court: A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent working in an undercover capacity in Richmond, Virginia, logged onto an Internet file sharing network on April 4, 2008, and searched for offenders who had images of child pornography available for sharing with other Internet users. The agent's search quickly returned a list of more than 300 child pornography images that were available for sharing from a computer which was traced to RODGERS. When FBI agents executed a federal search warrant at RODGERS' residence in Douglasville, Georgia, they found more than 1,300 still images and 49 videos of child pornography on his home laptop computer. During interviews with federal agents, RODGERS admitted that he had searched for and received the child pornography from Internet sources.

This case was investigated by special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Innocent Images Task Force.

Assistant United States Attorney Brent Alan Gray prosecuted the case.

For further information please contact Sally Quillian Yates, United States Attorney, or Charysse L. Alexander, Executive Assistant United States Attorney, through Patrick Crosby, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Attorney's Office, at (404) 581-6016. The Internet address for the HomePage for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia is www.usdoj.gov/usao/gan.