A
Total of Nine Defendants Prosecuted in Indiana to Date as a Result of Operation
Bulldog
WASHINGTON—Four men have pleaded guilty
in the Southern District of Indiana for their participation in an international
child pornography distribution ring, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer
of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and First Assistant U.S. Attorney
Josh Minkler of the Southern District of Indiana announced today.
The guilty pleas were entered yesterday
in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis and are the result of Operation Bulldog,
a multi-jurisdictional effort to dismantle and prosecute the members of the
international child pornography distribution ring. A total of nine defendants
have been prosecuted in the Southern District of Indiana for their
participation in the group.
“This operation uncovered a dangerous
and depraved group of criminals who were devoted to trading sexually explicit
images of children under the age of five,” said Assistant Attorney General
Breuer. “As a result of our investigation and prosecution, seven members of the
group—including three of the four men who pleaded guilty yesterday—are now
serving lengthy prison terms, and two others are awaiting sentencing. Child
pornography rings pose a threat to children around the world, and we will
continue to aggressively pursue those who participate in such groups.”
“I applaud the work of the investigators
and prosecutors on this case who took a search warrant in Bloomington and
successfully brought to justice defendants from all over the world,” said First
Assistant U.S. Attorney Minkler. “More importantly, as a result of this
18-month operation, more than two dozen children here in Indiana and across the
globe have been rescued from their tormentors.”
Shaun Kuykendall, 32, of South Carolina;
Richard Szulborski, 21, of Pennsylvania; Javahn Algere, 23, of Louisiana; and
Jeremy Labrec, 22, of Texas, pleaded guilty yesterday before U.S. Judge Jane
Magnus-Stinson. In addition, Kuykendall was sentenced to 25 years in prison,
Szulborski was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Algere was sentenced to 12
years in prison. Labrec will be sentenced at a later date.
On November 17, 2010, the FBI and state
and local law enforcement partners executed a federal search warrant at David
Bostic’s residence in Bloomington, Indiana. Investigators determined that
Bostic, 26, possessed hundreds of images and videos depicting children engaged
in sexually explicit acts and that he had actively distributed this child
pornography to other individuals through various means. According to court
documents, investigators also discovered that Bostic had produced child
pornography on multiple occasions over the previous two years, creating
sexually explicit images of four minor females, all of whom were between the
ages of two months and three years, as well as a minor male who was four years
old. Evidence gathered at the scene demonstrated that Bostic had distributed
the images of child pornography he produced to multiple individuals.
Bostic was arrested November 17, 2010,
and pleaded guilty to multiple charges in June 2011. He was sentenced on
November 22, 2011, to 315 years in prison, one of the longest sentences in
Southern District of Indiana.
Following Bostic’s arrest, a review of
the evidence determined that Bostic was a member of a large group of
individuals trading sexually explicit images of children, primarily focused on
child pornography depicting children under five years of age.
According to court documents, some of
the images produced by Bostic depicting Indiana children were distributed among
the members of the group. Within days of Bostic’s arrest, Operation Bulldog was
launched to identify and apprehend the members of the group. Since then, more
than 20 members of the group have been apprehended in the United States and
abroad.
In addition to Bostic, Kuykendall,
Szulborski, Algere, and Labrec, the following defendants have pleaded guilty in
the Southern District of Indiana: Danny L. Druck, 58, of Kentucky; Chris Reid,
37, of Michigan; and Todd King, 41, of California. Reid was sentenced to 35
years in prison and Druck and King were each sentenced to eight years in
prison. A plea agreement for another charged defendant, Nicholas King, 28, of
Washington, has been filed in the Southern District of Indiana.
Additional defendants were identified in
the course of this investigation and have been referred to federal prosecutors
and law enforcement agencies in other districts across the country and around
the world, including Sweden, Serbia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
A total of more than two dozen children
have been rescued as a result of Operation Bulldog. Efforts to identify
additional defendants and victims in the United States and abroad are active
and ongoing.
This case was investigated by the FBI,
with local assistance from the Indiana State Police, the Kokomo, Indiana Police
Department, and the Brownsburg, Indiana Police Department.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant
U.S. Attorney A. Brant Cook of the Southern District of Indiana and Trial
Attorney Michael Grant of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in the
Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
The defendants sentenced were ordered to
register as sex offenders and were sentenced to supervised release at the end
of their prison terms.
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 U.S. 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
www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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