89 are indicted in online porn case
Posted on 03/19/2002 12:13:48 PM PST by MeekOneGOP
89 are indicted in online porn case
East Texas man accused of setting up Web site; 7 other Texans indicted
03/19/2002
WASHINGTON - Clergy members, Little League coaches and a teacher's aide are among the 89 people charged with participating in an Internet site where hard-core child pornography was traded, federal authorities said Monday.
Forty arrests in 20 states had been made as of Monday, among them that of an East Texas man alleged to have set up the "Candyman" site visited by more than 7,000 people until its shutdown last year during an investigation initiated by the Houston FBI office. Fifty more arrests will occur this week, said Bruce Gebhardt, an FBI executive assistant director.
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"It is clear that a new marketplace for child pornography has emerged in the dark corners of cyberspace," Attorney General John Ashcroft told a news conference at FBI headquarters. However, he said, the arrests prove "there will be no free rides on the Internet for traffickers of child pornography."
The man alleged to have set up the "Candyman" e-group in December 2000 Mark Bates, a 32-year-old from Palestine made an initial appearance Monday in federal court in Tyler, federal authorities said. He is among eight people charged in a 10-count federal indictment unsealed Monday in Houston.
Also indicted were seven Texans alleged to have subscribed to the site: Walter Eugene Fitzpatrick, 61, of Liverpool; Robert Froman, 49, of Pasadena; Stephen Michael Johnston, 21, of College Station; Hector Ezeta, 38, of Houston; Jayson Anderson, 28, of Baytown; Billy Loyd White, 45, of Channelview; and Christopher James Tinney, 20, of Katy.
All eight in the Houston indictment were charged with a single count of conspiracy to knowingly transport, receive and distribute child porn by computer, which carries a maximum 15 years' imprisonment and $250,000 fine. Mr. Bates alone was charged with a single count of knowingly transporting child porn by computer, while the seven others were each charged with one count of receiving child porn by computer all of which carry a maximum 15-year prison sentence and $250,000 fine. And the seven were also each charged with a single count of possession of materials containing images of child pornography, which carries a maximum five-year sentence and $250,000 fine.
The Houston indictment alleges that Candyman subscribers were polled on questions such as whether they wanted to see more pornographic images of boys or girls; the age at which they first began abusing children; and the number of children they had molested.
Twenty-seven of those arrested to date have admitted molesting more than 36 children, the FBI said.
Operation Candyman was initiated 14 months ago, after an FBI agent in Houston identified three e-groups involved in posting and exchanging child pornography, the FBI said. FBI officials in Washington declined to provide particulars of the arrests, though they said two Catholic priests as well as several law-enforcement personnel were among those charged.
Investigators examined the 7,000 Candyman subscribers, which included 2,400 people living outside the United States, and prioritized which ones to investigate further, Mr. Gebhardt said.
E-mail: mmittelstadt@dallasnews.com
I look with jaundiced eye on any FR member who attempts to minimize the brutality and sheer evilness of sexually abusing children. Makes me wonder what's in YOUR cache.
Candyman perverts from Central PA are:
Robert D. Gift of Lewisburg. Bucknell alumsus. Guidance counselor in the Warrior Run School District.
Christian Alander of Selinsgrove
Keith Reibsome of Danville. Pleaded guilty in the Middle Disrict Court. Will cooperate and sing like a bird and give up all his pervert buddies.
Eric Shields--PA--guilty plea
In other areas:
Rev. John Hess, Catholic priest, Sacred Heart Church in Florissant, MO.
Rev. Thomas A. Rydzewski Catholic priest, associate pastor at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, MD.
John J. Schmidt Jr., elementary schoolteacher, Dolgeville, NY.
Shannon Timothy Macauley, school busdriver, Constable, NY
HATS OFF TO YOU, Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Gebhardt, and all agents involved. We parenta and grandparents thank you for taking this scum out of civilized society, and for protecting our children from these domestic TERRORISTS!!!
03/20/2002
MIDLAND, Texas - Another Texan has been arrested in "Operation Candyman," a nationwide child pornography sweep announced earlier this week.
Joel Kinzie Oldham III of Midland was arrested on Wednesday and charged with knowingly receiving visual depictions of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct and knowingly possessing the material, according to a news release from the FBI.
If convicted, Oldham faces up to 15 years in prison.
Oldham is the ninth Texan to be jailed in the sting that resulted in arrests across the nation, including that of an Athens man and seven others from Southeast Texas.
The effort targeted members of three Internet discussion groups on Yahoo Inc.'s Web site.
The FBI expects to arrest at least 50 more people by week's end as it breaks up an Internet child-pornography ring that allegedly included two Catholic priests, six other members of the clergy, a school bus driver and a civilian law enforcement employee.
One of them, Mark Bates, an unemployed truck driver from Athens, is accused of being the news groups' moderator, or leader.
Bates, 32, faces a detention hearing at federal court in Tyler on Thursday.
Essentially, unchecked spamming will eventually render e-mail useless as a communications medium, and I'm not ready for that to happen.
And yes, the wall starts to feel good after a while as you beat your head against it ...
Yeah right, and Clinton is innocent because he wasn't found guilty, just like OJ.
Innocent until proven guilty applies to the government, not private citizens. Private citizens are entitled to view evidence and make up their own minds.
It's skin off my nose because it endangers society and children. If you punish armed robbery more than murder, you'll see more murders. There is supposed to be a proportionality in the justice system, not only to protect the accused but also to protect society. In a criminal knows he'll get 100 years for armed robbery and only 5 for murder, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize you'll have a lot more dead people. Obviously you want neither, but you want to prevent murders more.
I'm sorry I said you were stupid, I should have said "God your comment is stupid". I apologize.
The problem is that if Westerfield is convicted, he's going to end up on either death row or doing life without parole. The persons who were charged will probably do little time, some minimal probation and a fine, via plea bargains. Within a short time, they'll be right back at it. That's the proportionality. The people who aren't charged will go somewhere else on line for their child porn. The deterrance factor is the publicity surrounding the cases, not the charges themselves. If I remember the numbers correctly, the Justice Dept. has charged somewhere around 100 or so people out of 2,000 people, a very small percentage of those who have actually been accused of possession of child porn. They've scattered around the indictments to different states, of course, but someone who is involved with this child porn ring plays the odds, they're not even going to get charged.
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