Former Hagerstown Man Pleads Guilty to Sexually Exploiting a Minor to Produce Child Pornography

BALTIMORE—Roger Allen Repp, III, age 45, formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to sexually exploiting a minor to produce child pornography.

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Colonel Marcus L. Brown, Superintendent of the Maryland State Police; and Washington County State’s Attorney Charles P. Strong, Jr.

According to Repp’s plea agreement, Repp produced sexually explicit and lascivious photographs of a teen-aged girl under the age of 16 via a pinhole camera he set up in the girl’s bedroom and bathroom without her knowledge. Repp admits that he distributed those images to other pedophiles via a file sharing program over the Internet in return for other child pornography being sent to him. Repp’s conduct was discovered during an undercover investigation of file sharing activities on the Internet, when on March 11 and March 16, 2011, respectively, two separate undercover investigators downloaded images and videos of child pornography from Repp’s collection via a file sharing program.

As a result of the undercover investigation, a search warrant was executed at Repp’s residence on April 22, 2011 by members of the Maryland State Police Computer Crimes Unit. Law enforcement seized two laptop computers, an external hard drive, and digital media. A subsequent forensic examination of the external hard drive revealed numerous files of child pornography, including 125 video files depicting the victim that were surreptitiously filmed by Repp. There were also several chat logs between Repp and others where he offered to share files of the victim and chats where Repp is looking for other individuals to share files with him.

As part of his plea agreement, Repp 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).

Repp faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years in prison, followed by up to lifetime of supervised release. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake has scheduled sentencing for June 28, 2012 at 9:15 a.m.

This 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, 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.usdoj.gov/psc For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI, Maryland State Polie, and Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Judson T. Mihok, who prosecuted the case.