A man who distributed child pornography was sentenced today to twenty years in federal prison.
Robert Buss, age 50, of Dubuque, Iowa, received the sentence after a January 9, 2014, guilty plea to one count of distribution of child pornography. At the guilty plea hearing, Buss admitted that, in 2012, he used the Internet to distribute child pornography. Information provided at the sentencing hearing indicated that defendant also attempted to entice three minors to send him sexually explicit depictions of themselves, including a boy he met while on a mission trip to Haiti.
Buss was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade. Buss was sentenced to 240 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $100 was imposed, and Buss must also serve a ten-year term of supervised release. He must comply with all sex offender registration and public notification requirements.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the Dubuque Police Department, and the Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources."
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is CR 13-1020.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
