Gaithersburg Man Sentenced for Possessing Child Pornography

GREENBELT, MD—Chief U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow sentenced Andrew Liang, age 26, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, today to a year and a day in prison followed by five years of supervised release for possessing child pornography. Chief Judge Chasanow ordered that Liang pay a fine of $10,000 and that upon his release from prison, Liang must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Elton Malone, Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Office of Investigations, Special Investigations Branch.

According to his plea agreement, beginning in approximately 2009, Liang downloaded at least nine child pornography videos from the Internet and saved them on his computer. The children in these videos were from four years old to young teens under 18 years old. Law enforcement discovered the videos when they searched his home and car on March 29, 2011. The videos contained more than 600 pictures of sexually explicit conduct, including images of prepubescent girls and girls in their early teens engaged in sexual activity or in sexually graphic poses.

This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. 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 Projectsafechildhood.gov. Details about Maryland’s program are available at Justice.gov/usao/md/Safe-Childhood/index.html.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI and HHS-OIG for their investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney David Salem for the District of Maryland, and Trial Attorneys Kevin Muhlendorf and Thomas Hall of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, who prosecuted the case.