JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 25-year-old St. Johns County man was sentenced Wednesday to six years in federal prison for distribution of child pornography, to be followed by a seven year term of supervised release.
Sean-Michael Smith, who was also ordered to register as a sex offender, pleaded guilty on Feb. 24.
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According to court records, on July 3, 2013, a detective from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office was actively investigating computer users who were distributing child pornography via a peer-to-peer file sharing network.
On that date, the detective was able to successfully download three videos depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct from an IP address registered to Smith. Based on that information, the Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a search warrant for Smith's home.
When the warrant was executed on Aug. 2, Smith admitted to previously downloading and viewing child pornography, including one of the videos downloaded by the detective. Smith said, among other things, that he had been viewing child pornography for 10 years, and admitted that whenever the file sharing program on his computer was active, any downloaded content in the shared folder would be available for other users on the file sharing network to download.