Fort Worth Man Sentenced to 60 Months in Federal Prison for Possessing Child Pornography

FORT WORTH, Texas — A 31-year-old man from Fort Worth, Texas, Jarrod Mayes, was sentenced today by Senior U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means 60 months in federal prison, following his guilty plea in April 2016 to an indictment charging one count of possession of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.

Mayes, who has been on bond since his arrest in December 2015, was remanded into custody following the sentencing hearing.

Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) executed a search warrant at Mayes’ home on December 17, 2015, and during the execution of the warrant, special agents seized digital media belonging to Mayes, including his iPhone. 

According to documents filed in the case, Mayes admitted he first started using the KiK Messenger smartphone application (app) in 2009, and that was the first time he had observed child pornography.  He acknowledged that he had saved videos and images of child pornography in a hidden folder inside of a calculator app on his cellphone.  He advised that he stored the images in this app because he did not want his wife to find them, and that when he deleted Kik from his cellphone, it would delete the images.  He also stated that when he would reinstall Kik, he would post images of child pornography in group messages because other users would not send him any child pornography until he posted images of child pornography.  A forensic review of his iPhone revealed three video files; Mayes knew the files depicted real minors, to include prepubescent minors, engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of the Project Safe Childhood (PSC) initiative.  PSC is a department initiative launched in May 2006 to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children.  Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC marshals federal, state, tribal and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.  Since FY 2011, the Department of Justice has filed 20,260 PSC cases against 19,111 defendants.  These cases include prosecutions of child sex trafficking; sexual abuse of a minor or ward; child pornography offenses; obscene visual representation of the sexual abuse of children; selling or buying of children; and many more statutes.  To learn more about PSC’s work, please visit: https://www.justice.gov/psc.

ICE HSI investigated the case; Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Saleem was in charge of the prosecution.

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