Two Seattle area men pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to offenses related to images of child rape and exploitation, announced U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes. Both men are being prosecuted as part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office coordinated efforts with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and Washington’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.
In the first case, DANNY ZIMMERMAN, 43, a registered sex offender from SeaTac, Washington was arrested in June 2015, after an investigation traced images of child rape to ZIMMERMAN’s twitter account and his internet protocol (IP) address. According to records filed in King County Superior Court and in U.S. District Court, between September 2014 and February 2015, Twitter made multiple reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) about images of child rape uploaded to the internet. The reports resulted in a law enforcement investigation that revealed that the internet address involved in the distribution of the sexually explicit images was used by ZIMMERMAN. ZIMMERMAN has two 1996 convictions for child molestation in the first degree.
Under the terms of the plea agreement ZIMMERMAN faces a mandatory minimum ten years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour on March 15, 2016.
In the second case, GREGORY MARK MOLLEY, 54, of Issaquah, Washington pleaded guilty to receipt of images of minors in sexually explicit conduct and faces a sentence of seven to nine years in prison when sentenced by Judge Coughenour on March 18, 2016. According to the facts in the plea agreement MOLLEY used hidden cameras to film children in the bathroom and bedrooms of his home.
The ZIMMERMAN case was investigated by the Internet Crimes against Children Task Force, the Kent Police Department and the King County Sheriff’s Office. The MOLLEY case was investigated by the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) and the U.S. Secret Service.
Both cases are being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson. Ms. Gregson is a Senior Deputy King County Prosecutor specially designated to prosecute child exploitation cases in federal court.
These cases were 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 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.justice.gov/psc.