Durham Man Caught by Alamance County Child Exploitation Operation Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

GREENSBORO, N.C. – A man who pleaded guilty to attempted enticement of a minor was sentenced today, announced Matthew G.T. Martin, United States Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.

I. JEFFREY BRANDEIS, 49, of Durham, North Carolina, pleaded guilty on July 25, 2019, to one count of attempted enticement of a minor. He was sentenced today by United States District Judge N. Carlton Tilley, Jr. to 120 months of imprisonment followed by 15 years of supervised release.

In September 2018, BRANDEIS used a popular chat application to contact an individual purporting to be a 13 year-old girl, but that was actually an undercover detective with the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office. BRANDEIS exchanged more than one thousand text messages with the undercover detective for several months, with many of those messages being of a sexual nature. BRANDEIS was arrested after he traveled to a park in Graham on the night of January 2, 2019, for the purpose of engaging in indecent liberties with a minor, as shown in his text messages.

Investigators seized BRANDEIS’S phone and, with the assistance of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), found that the device had been used to navigate to websites that contained child pornography. Investigators subsequently seized BRANDEIS’s computer and examined it. Child pornography artifacts discovered on the computer revealed that it has been used to access and download child pornography over several years.

The Alamance County Sheriff’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are both members of the North Carolina Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. With the consistent support of HSI, the referenced undercover child exploitation operation conducted by the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office has resulted in multiple arrests and convictions.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse, and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Eric L. Iverson. Led by United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

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