Former High School Custodian Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Transporting and Possessing Child Pornography

CHICAGO—A former high school custodian was sentenced today to 15 years in federal prison for transporting and possessing child pornography. The defendant, Anthony Skoien, 48, formerly of Joliet, was a custodian at Plainfield South High School at the time of his arrest in August 2010. He pleaded guilty in February, admitting that he was responsible for transporting images and videos of child pornography via computer from among the thousands of files that he possessed in his personal collection. Skoien made the images available to a file-sharing network and undercover law enforcement officers downloaded the materials directly from Skoien’s computer network.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer placed Skoien on 15 years’ supervised release following his 180-month prison sentence and fined him $20,000. The judge imposed the mandatory minimum of five years on each of two counts of transporting child pornography and five years for possessing the illegal images, and ordered all three terms to be served consecutively for a total of 15 years. Skoien must serve at least 85 percent of his 15-year sentence before he is eligible for release and there is no parole in the federal prison system. The sentence was announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to court documents, undercover agents downloaded at least 111 computer files containing child pornography from a private peer-to-peer file-sharing network that Skoien had established. The images and videos portrayed real children, including prepubescent children, engaged in sexual conduct, including sadistic and masochistic conduct.

Skoien was arrested on Aug. 27, 2010, after FBI agents executed a search warrant at his home and seized a desktop computer, two hard drives, floppy disks, and zip disks that contained more than 7,500 videos and images of child pornography, which he had obtained via the Internet. The images were submitted to the Child Victim Identification Program of the National Center of Missing & Exploited Children, which identified approximately 5,748 image files as being of known minor victims. The remaining videos and images featured exploited children who are unknown to law enforcement. Skoien’s computer equipment and contraband were ordered forfeited.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Innocent Images Task Force. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennie Levin.