A federal crackdown on child pornography has resulted in numerous charges being filed in Missouri.
A 19-year-old St. Louis man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually exploiting three minors in an attempt to produce child pornography.
The federal prosecutor in Kansas City says Harry Sneed, a student at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, was arrested in his dorm room earlier this year. Investigators found hundreds of photos and videos of child porn on his computer. Sneed confessed to portraying himself through e-mails as a teen-age girl who belonged to a secret modeling agency in an attempt to get three 11-year-olds to send him sexually explicit photos of themselves. None complied with his request.
A federal grand jury in Springfield accuses a southern Missouri man of producing child pornography.
The jury returned a five-count indictment against 33-year-old Timothy Stringer of Golden, alleging that Stringer used a minor to produce child pornography, uses two cell phones and a digital camera, between March 21st and June 14th of this year. It further alleges that Stringer used two minors to produce child porn on June 14th. Stringer also is accused of possessing nine counterfeit $100 bills.
The same federal grand jury extended its reach to Lewiston, Maine; accusing a 53-year-old man who lives there with attempting to transfer obscenity to a minor in Laclede County. The jury accuses Steven Hall of distributing child pornography over the Internet earlier this year and of attempting to transfer obscene material to a minor in southwest Missouri on three separate occasions late last year and early this year.
