FORT SMITH — A Fort Smith man was sentenced in federal court Tuesday to eight years and four months in prison after he pleaded guilty last summer to one count of transporting child pornography.
Terry Lee Bellah, 55, pleaded guilty in August before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III to the charge after a laptop computer that he owned was identified last January by the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office Cyber Crimes Unit as offering to participate in the distribution of child pornography.
Bellah was arrested in April by a Homeland Security Investigations agent in Birmingham, Ala., while he was en route from Fort Smith to a job he accepted in Atlanta, according to an arrest warrant affidavit by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Scott Crawford.
He had with him the computer that the affidavit stated contained child pornography.
The affidavit also stated that Bellah admitted at the time of his arrest that he had been downloading child pornography using the Internet for about 18 months.
In addition to his prison term, Bellah was ordered to undergo 15 years of supervised release after he is freed from prison, to have no unsupervised contact with underage youths, to undergo a mental-health evaluation, and to not possess or use a computer or other electronic device with Internet or photographic capability without permission from the U.S.Probation Office, according to court records.
After his plea, court records show, the government dismissed four counts of receiving visual depictions of child pornography.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/23/2013