Donald S. Boyce, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced that Jeremy Foster, 32, of Godfrey, Illinois, was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Staci M. Yandle to 60 months imprisonment for one count of receipt of child pornography. Judge Yandle also sentenced Foster to five years of supervised release to follow the imprisonment, a fine of $3,000 and a $100 special assessment.
According to court documents, on October 9, 2014, the Federal Police of Switzerland seized a server in Zurich, Switzerland that was running a child pornography website. Swiss authorities identified over 800 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in the United States that had downloaded child pornography from this server. One of these IP addresses was registered to Foster’s Godfrey address. Agents from the St. Louis division of Homeland Security conducted the local investigation. Foster’s laptop was seized and a forensic search revealed that on October 4, 2015, Foster downloaded multiple videos containing child pornography. These videos constituted child pornography as defined at 18 U.S.C. § 2256(8). Homeland Security Investigations agents interviewed Foster and he confessed to downloading and viewing videos containing child pornography.
This case was prosecuted 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."
The case was investigated by the Homeland Security Investigations St. Louis division and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Christopher Hoell.