FORT DIX, N.J. (AP) — Five inmates serving sentences for child pornography used contraband cellphones and removable storage cards to share child pornography with others inside a prison, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
The inmates at Fort Dix in New Jersey face charges of conspiracy and distributing, selling and possessing child porn on federal property. They were all due to make their initial court appearances Wednesday afternoon.
The men were involved in the sales of the removable storage cards to government informants in recent months, prosecutors said. The cards included videos involving children as young as infants and toddlers and depictions of child sexual abuse.
The five defendants are all serving lengthy prison terms for trafficking in child pornography. They face sentences ranging from 15 to 40 years if convicted on the new charges.
“Anyone who sexually exploits children, whether incarcerated or not, will be relentlessly pursued and brought to stand trial for their heinous crimes,” said Timothy Gallagher, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark field office.
Anthony Jeffries, 31, of Orange, Virginia, who is serving a 14-year sentence for distributing and possessing child porn, was a leader of the prison network, prosecutors said. He maintained a cloud account containing images and videos of child sexual abuse and transferred a storage card containing child porn to a government informant in November 2016, prosecutors said.
Two other inmates — Jordan Allen, 30, of Plain City, Ohio, and Christopher Roffler, 29, of Virginia Beach, Virginia — accepted payments from informants for removable storage cards given to the informants by Brian McKay, 46, of Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, according to prosecutors. One of the cards included child sexual abuse videos involving young children and bestiality, while the other included hundreds of images and videos of child sexual abuse, prosecutors said.
Erik Smith, 35, of Iron Mountain, Michigan, is accused of selling a removable storage card containing child sex abuse to an informant.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether they had attorneys to represent them on the latest charges.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.