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2008-09-25  MORE TOP STORIES | Gainesville man guilty of child porn
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October 10, 2008
A jury in federal district court has returned a guilty verdict against Marvin D. Bridges, 37, of Gainesville, on charges of receiving and possessing child pornography, after a three day trial before Senior United States District Court Judge William C. O'Kelley.
United States Attorney David E. Nahmias said, "This verdict is another message to those who sexually exploit children: federal agencies and prosecutors will continue to aggressively locate you and lock you away from the community. This case is also a shining example of the value of coordinated, nationwide investigations. This defendant's illegal purchases of images of children being sexually exploited were identified during the prosecution of a global on-line purveyor of child pornography. Agents from Washington, D.C., passed the lead to agents here in Atlanta, who, in coordination with local authorities from Forsyth County, tracked this criminal down and brought him to justice."
"We will continue aggressively pursuing predators who think that they can hide behind the anonymity of cyberspace," said Kenneth A. Smith, ICE Special Agent in Charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Atlanta. "ICE has zero tolerance for those who exploit the most vulnerable segment of our society--our children."
According to United States Attorney Nahmias and the evidence presented at trial: Bridges was identified as a possible child pornography consumer during an ICE investigation of a series of websites that distributed child pornography. Evidence developed in that investigation revealed that Bridges was a customer of several of the websites targeted and downloaded child pornography onto his home computer. In September 2007, federal and local authorities searched his home, recovering a computer whose hard drive had thousands of images of child pornography stored on it. A forensic examination of the hard drive yielded e-mails confirming Bridges' membership in several of the targeted websites as well as evidence of his accessing of illegal content on those websites. Bridges testified, claiming that he had no knowledge of any child pornography on his computer. The jury deliberated for just over 30 minutes before returning its guilty verdict.
Bridges is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 19 before Judge O'Kelley in Gainesville. BRIDGES faces a mandatory minimum five year term of incarceration and a maximum term of 30 years.
This case was investigated by Special Agents of U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as officers of the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office.
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