FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   CRM

TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2007        (202) 514-2008

WWW.USDOJ.GOV   TDD (202) 514-1888

BOSTON MAN SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN PRISON IN

COMMERCIAL CHILD PORNOGRAPHY WEBSITE CASE

  WASHINGTON – A Boston man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering and conspiracy to sell, transport, reproduce, distribute and receive child pornography, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney John L. Brownlee of the Western District of Virginia announced today.

                                                                               
        Aaron Campbell Brown, 26, of Boston, was sentenced today in the Western District of Virginia in Roanoke, Va.  U.S. District Court Judge Samuel G. Wilson also ordered Brown to forfeit $128,300 and serve five years of supervised release following his prison term.   

On May 14, 2007, Brown pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to sell, transport, reproduce, distribute and receive child pornography, and one count of money laundering.  The conspiracy spanned more than five years and involved a number of commercial child pornography websites including mexicofriends.com and justinfriends.com.  These websites were created, developed, hosted, and operated by Brown and co-conspirators Gregory John Mitchel and Timothy Ryan Richards.  Through his company neova.net, Brown provided services and other support to the websites, including website hosting, technical assistance, and customer payment processing.  The websites contained child pornography and offered memberships for a subscription fee.  Brown disbursed the proceeds from the sale of subscriptions to Mitchel and Richards, and kept some for himself.

       
        On July 14, 2006, Mitchel was sentenced to 150 years in prison in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia for child pornography offenses. 

On Oct. 26, 2006, Richards was convicted on ten counts of child pornography offenses in the Middle District of Tennessee.  He faces a minimum of fifteen years in prison when he is sentenced on August 20, 2007.

        The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Bonnie L. Kane, and former Deputy Chief Sherri A. Stephan of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph W. H. Mott of the Western District of Virginia.  The case was investigated by FBI Special Agent J. Brooke Donahue and the High Technology Investigative Unit of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.