A Reading man pleaded guilty to federal charges of distribution and receipt of child pornography, the FBI announced.<\/p>\n
Matthew McKinney, 27, who was arrested in August, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Leeson Jr. on Nov. 12.<\/p>\n
According to court records:<\/p>\n
McKinney came to investigators\u2019 attention based on his communications with the subject of an FBI New York investigation into \u201cSteve Jobs,\u201d a Telegram social media account that was used to trade child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n
In reviewing the Telegram account, investigators observed communications with a Telegram user who they later determined was McKinney. The communications contained both the distribution and receipt of child sexual abuse material. FBI Allentown investigators said McKinney admitted it was his account in an interview.<\/p>\n
On May 26, McKinney\u2019s Telegram account received 80 video files containing child sexual abuse material. On July 29, four such videos were sent from McKinney\u2019s account to \u201cSteve Jobs.\u201d McKinney\u2019s account also sent a link containing about 1,100 video files containing child pornography, including some depicting the sexual abuse of children as young as infants and toddlers. There were others that depicted female children, some of whom were pre-pubescent, engaging in sexual conduct.<\/p>\n
The defendant is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 25 and faces a maximum possible term of 40 years\u2019 imprisonment, with a mandatory minimum of five years in prison; five years up to a lifetime of supervised release; a $500,000 fine; mandatory restitution of at least $3,000 per victim and additional financial assessments.<\/p>\n
FBI officials said the 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 2006 by the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Reading man pleaded guilty to federal charges of distribution and receipt of child pornography, the FBI announced.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-41659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading","14":"tag-reading-city","15":"tag-reading-city-headlines","16":"tag-reading-city-news","17":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}