Christopher Murphy, 37, of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced on July 21 in U.S. District Court to 100 months in prison for distributing child sexual abuse materials, according to an announcement by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
Murphy pleaded guilty on March 16 before Judge Royce C. Lamberth to one count of distribution of child pornography. In addition to the prison sentence, Judge Lamberth ordered Murphy to serve ten years of supervised release and required him to register as a sex offender.
According to court papers, Murphy used two encrypted messaging applications—Signal and Telegram—to distribute and receive child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), including materials involving extremely young children. He was also a member of several Signal groups primarily used for sharing CSAM and hosted or attended Zoom video meetings with others for viewing and exchanging such material. Law enforcement recovered chat messages in which Murphy discussed building his collection of child pornography; thousands of images and videos were discovered on his devices following his arrest.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Richard Kelley.
This prosecution is part of the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood initiative. The program was created in February 2006 as a nationwide effort led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices to protect children from online exploitation and abuse through coordination among federal, state, and local resources.