Fayetteville Man Sentenced For Kiddie Porn

Friday, August 30, 2013

FAYETTEVILLE — A Fayetteville man was sentenced to federal prison Thursday for downloading child porn from the Internet.

Michael Billy Whitehead, 26, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jimm Hendren to 97 months in prison followed by 10 years supervised probation. Whitehead pleaded guilty to one count of receiving child pornography Dec. 5.

“In this case, the sheer number of images is extremely disturbing, since each image represents the victimization of a child. These children will forever be victimized by these images,” said Conner Eldridge, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. “This defendant was brought to justice, and we will work even more aggressively to prosecute these types of cases to the fullest extent of the law for the sake of these innocent children.”

According to court records, Fayetteville police began investigating a lead in early 2012 Whitehead was involved in the distribution of child pornography images via a peer-to-peer network. The Internet address of the computer was determined to be registered to Whitehead.

On Feb. 22, 2012, police searched Whitehead’s residence and a computer was seized later determined to contain more than 10,000 images of child pornography.

After being informed of his rights, Whitehead admitted to viewing and possessing child pornography images on his computer and also said he knew the files in his shared folder were available for other persons to download.