Winter Park Man Sentenced to 12 Years for Distributing Child Pornography

ORLANDO, FL—U.S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces that U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell today sentenced Jason Powell (30,Winter Park) to 12 years in federal prison for distributing and possessing child pornography. The court also ordered Powell to forfeit the computers he used to distribute and store the child pornography. As part of Powell’s sentence, the court also ordered him to serve 10 years of supervised release after serving his prison sentence. Powell pled guilty on March 28, 2011.

According to court documents, Powell distributed child pornography using a file-sharing program over the Internet. On March 28, 2010, a law enforcement officer downloaded 37 pictures and four videos of child pornography from Powell. Subsequently, agents executed a search warrant at Powell’s home and found more than 1,500 images and 430 videos containing child pornography. The majority of the images were of prepubescent and adolescent children. Many of the images were violent. Agents also found that Powell frequently chatted with others about his sexual interest in children and distributed child pornography during these chats. In addition, Powell actively sought out others with new child pornography to trade, stated that he would remove people from his friends list who did not share child pornography, and tutored others on ways to avoid detection from law enforcement.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the 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 locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov and click on the tab “other resources.”

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Karen L. Gable.