Booneville Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Producing Child Pornography

            Fort Smith, Arkansas – Kenneth Elser, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, announced that Erik Andrew Lotvedt, age 30, of Booneville, Arkansas, was sentenced today to 25 years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release after pleading guilty to the one-count Information, charging the defendant with using, persuading, inducing, enticing and coercing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct.    The Honorable P.K. Holmes III presided over the hearing in the United States District Court in Fort Smith.

            In his plea agreement, Lotvedt admitted to using his cell phone to produce an image of child pornography which involved a minor victim who was less than 12 years old.

            This case was investigated by the River Valley and Northwest Arkansas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force with assistance from the Booneville Police Department and the Arkansas State Police.  Assistant United States Attorney Ashleigh Buckley prosecuted the case for the United States.

            This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and their Criminal Division Child Exploitation and Obscenity Sections (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.

*  *  *    E N D    *  *  *

Related court documents may be found on the Public Access to Electronic Records website @ www.pacer.gov