Thursday, June 21, 2012

Schuylkill County Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Producing Child Pornography


The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that a 38-year-old Schuylkill County man was sentenced today by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik to 25 years in prison for producing child pornography.

According to United States Attorney Peter J. Smith, Jonathan Binns, of Shenandoah, previously admitted that he took sexually explicit photographs and videos of two minor children in 2010, uploaded the child pornography to a computer, and maintained the images on a thumb drive.

Binns was indicted by a federal grand jury in January 2011, following an investigation by Homeland Security Investigators, the FBI, the Pennsylvania State Police, detectives from the Lackawanna County District Attorney’s Office, and the Schuylkill County District Attorney’s Office.

Judge Kosik also ordered Binns to serve a lifetime of supervised release following his prison sentence and to pay a $100 special assessment. Binns must also undergo sex offender treatment and comply with registration requirements for sex offenders.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a U.S. Department of Justice nationwide initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. 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 case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis P. Sempa.

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