Conway resident Andrew Luten pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of producing child pornography, agreeing to a recommended 15-year prison term.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed Walker told Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller that an investigation resulted in Luten's indictment in February 2012, when a Missouri man called police to report that he had caught his 16-year-old daughter exchanging nude photographs with an adult male. The father reported that he found a nude photograph of his daughter on his iPhone after she used it, and that she then confessed that she had been talking with the man since May 2011, when she was 15.
About a year later, the O'Fallon, Mo., Police Department contacted the Arkansas State Police about looking into an exchange of nude photographs between the girl and an unknown man, Walker said.
He said the girl gave investigators consent to search her computer, where they found that she had been on the website Steampowered.com, a multiplayer video game website with video streaming and social networking services. Investigators also found that the girl had communicated with someone at an email address whose Internet Protocol address was supplied by Google, leading to a subpoena to AT&T, that in turn revealed the account was registered to a Conway man, Walker said.
When officers went to the home of the man, who was Luten's roommate, they found that Luten's computer hard drive contained "hundreds of images" of child porn, including images of the Missouri girl, tucked away in a folder.
Walker said Luten was cooperative and admitted he had met the girl on "Steam" in 2011, when, "she told me she was 16, and I was 28."
The prosecutor said a deeper examination of the hard drive in 2015 by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children revealed 115 images of known victims -- victims whose photographs have been traded on the Internet again and again.
A forensic examination also found 10,348 images and 47 videos of child pornography, including 186 images and one video of the Missouri girl, according to Walker.
Luten, standing beside defense attorney Chris Tarver of the federal public defender's office, listened to the facts that Walker read aloud and answered, "Yes, sir," when the judge asked if the allegations were true and if he had in fact possessed all those images and videos.
Miller accepted the plea and dismissed two other charges Luten faced. When Luten is sentenced at a later date, he faces 15 to 30 years in federal prison, without parole, and five years to life on probation, as well as a potential fine of up to $250,000. The judge isn't required to abide by the recommended minimum sentence negotiated by attorneys.
Metro on 06/09/2017