U.S. Attorney Carlton S. Shier IV | U.S. Department of Justice
A Lexington resident, James Allen Brown, 26, received a prison sentence of 165 months for distributing child pornography. Chief U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves delivered the sentence on Wednesday.
Brown's plea agreement revealed that from June 2022 to March 2023, he utilized several Instagram accounts to distribute and obtain child sexual abuse material. Authorities discovered explicit images of minors on his cell phone and accessed through a cloud storage system. During an interview, Brown confessed to using Instagram and Telegram for trading child pornography with others.
Federal law mandates that Brown serve at least 85 percent of his sentence. After release, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for two decades.
The sentencing announcement was made by Carlton S. Shier IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Michael Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge at the FBI's Louisville Field Office; and Russell Coleman, Kentucky Attorney General.
The FBI and the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General led the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Melton is handling prosecution duties.
This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 aimed at addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse online. The program coordinates efforts among federal, state, and local resources to apprehend offenders and rescue victims. More information about this initiative can be found at www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
