A Lexington resident, James Allen Brown, aged 26, received a sentence of 165 months in prison for distributing child pornography. Chief U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves delivered the sentence on Wednesday.
Brown's plea agreement revealed that between June 2022 and March 2023, he utilized multiple Instagram accounts to distribute and obtain child sexual abuse material. Law enforcement discovered sexually explicit images of minors on Brown’s cell phone and a cloud storage system. Brown admitted during an interview with law enforcement to using Instagram and Telegram for trading child pornography.
Federal law mandates that Brown serve at least 85 percent of his prison term. After his release, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for two decades.
The sentencing was announced by Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Michael Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Louisville Field Office; and Russell Coleman, Kentucky Attorney General.
The FBI and the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Melton is prosecuting the case for the government.
This prosecution falls under Project Safe Childhood, an initiative launched by the Department of Justice in 2006 to address child sexual exploitation and abuse nationwide. The program is led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices along with the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), pooling federal, state, and local resources to find and prosecute those exploiting children online while also rescuing victims.
For further details on Project Safe Childhood, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.