Jacksonville Man Sentenced to More Than 10 Years in Federal Prison for Receiving Child Pornography Over the Internet

JACKSONVILLE, FL—U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard sentenced Zacchaeus Andrew Crawford (26, Jacksonville) today to 125 months in federal prison followed by a 15-year term of supervised release for receiving child pornography over the Internet. Crawford was also ordered to register as a sex offender. He pled guilty to the charge on September 14, 2011.

According to court documents, an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Phoenix, Arizona, signed into a particular Internet file sharing program to identify individuals who were trafficking and sharing child pornography. The agent determined that an individual with a particular username was logged into the network. The agent browsed the specific user’s shared directories and found multiple images depicting child pornography that were being publicly shared by the user. A few days later, the same FBI agent logged onto the same Internet file sharing program and observed that the same user was logged into the network. The agent downloaded 168 image files and 16 video files directly from two of the user’s three shared directories. Many of these images and videos depicted child pornography. Further investigation revealed that the user’s host computer was located at a residence in Jacksonville, where Crawford lived.

A federal search warrant was executed at Crawford’s residence in Jacksonville. The agents seized, among other things, a desktop computer used by Crawford. During an interview, Crawford admitted that he had downloaded images of child pornography and that he “had a feeling” that he “would be in jail for a few years.” Crawford was shown several images depicting child pornography that were downloaded by the undercover FBI agent from his (Crawford’s) computer. Crawford indicated that he had received those files. A forensic analysis of Crawford’s desktop computer tower showed that the tower contained two internal hard drives that contained approximately 205,000 image files. Specifically, the two hard drives together contained at least 500 images and at least 100 videos depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Jacksonville and Phoenix, Arizona. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.

This is another case 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.”