Omaha Man Sentenced for Distributing Child Pornography

United States Attorney Deborah R. Gilg announced that Matthew McCann, 24, was sentenced in federal court for distributing child pornography. The Honorable Laurie Smith Camp sentenced McCann to an 80-month term of imprisonment. After his release from prison, McCann must serve a 10-year term of supervised release. McCann was also ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution to one of the victims depicted in his collection of child pornography.

On May 9, 2011, members of the FBI Omaha Cyber Crimes Task Force served a search warrant on a residence where McCann was staying. McCann admitted to downloading child pornography daily for an extended period. He stated that he frequently deleted images and stated a preference for 10-year-olds and older. More than 60 videos of child pornography with a substantial amount involving prepubescent minors engaged in sexual acts were found on McCann’s computer. The FBI laboratory was able to recover encrypted texts from McCann’s cell phone, wherein he engaged in sexually explicit texts with a 13-year-old girl.

This case was brought as 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 Attorney’s 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 www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

This matter was investigated by the Omaha FBI’s Cyber Crime Task Force (CCTF), of which the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is a partner. The Omaha CCTF is a multi-jurisdictional task force consisting of 11 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies from Nebraska and Iowa. The mission of the Omaha CCTF is to investigate and apprehend high technology criminals and to protect our communities by preventing high technology crime and national security threats involving computers and computer networks. The Omaha CCTF was established on the premise that the capabilities of law enforcement agencies to investigate computer and high technology related crimes are enhanced in a task force setting involving the sharing of resources and expertise.