Man Sentenced to 150 Months for Distributing Child Pornography

Michael Kristopher Gilbert, 30, of Fort Worth, Texas, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means to 150 months in federal prison and a 15-year term of supervised release following his guilty plea in May 2012 to one count of distribution of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldaña of the Northern District of Texas. Gilbert has been in custody since early April 2012.
According to documents filed in the case, in October 2011, an FBI agent, acting in an undercover capacity to investigate the online distribution of child pornography, entered a peer-to-peer file sharing network. The agent entered Gilbert’s shared directories and downloaded images of child pornography. In March 2012, when FBI agents executed a federal search warrant at Gilbert’s home, Gilbert admitted that he had been using a peer-to-peer file sharing program to trade files depicting child pornography and had done so as recently as the prior day. Law enforcement located images and videos of child pornography on Gilbert’s computer.
This matter was brought 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 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better 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 FBI investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Aisha Saleem was in charge of the prosecution.