SYRACUSE, NEW YORK - Chad Swartwood, age 41, of Castle Creek, New York, pled guilty on Monday to attempting to receive and receiving child pornography.
The announcement was by United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith and Kevin Kelly, Special Agent in Charge of the Buffalo Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
As part of his plea, Swartwood admitted that from approximately December 2017 through December 2018, he operated multiple social media accounts on different platforms. He presented himself as a teenage female interested in online, sexual interactions with minor boys. While impersonating a teenage female, Swartwood engaged in sexually explicit text conversations with people he believed to be boys, sent sexually explicit images that he claimed to be of himself as a teenage female, and solicited sexually explicit images from boys.
Swartwood faces at least 15 years and up to 40 years in prison, because of a prior conviction, from November 2000, for Sexual Abuse in the First Degree, an offense that involved a 9-year-old child. Sentencing is scheduled for March 18, 2020 before Senior United States District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy. A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the particular statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, and other factors.
This case was investigated by HSI and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Gadarian as part of Project Safe Childhood. Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and is designed to marshal federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
