Thaindian News

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (BNO NEWS) – A former Orange County, FL investigator was sentenced Friday for possessing child pornography.

Sean Peters, 39, was sentenced to 52 months in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release for possessing child pornography. The court also ordered Peters to forfeit his computer and hard drive, which were used to commit the offense. Peter had been found guilty on October 16, 2009, following a jury trial.

Peters was employed as an investigator in the Orange County State’s Attorney’s Office. In June 2007, Peters resigned from the Attorney’s Office when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents began investigating the case against him. ICE special agents discovered that Peter’s credit card had been used to fund a PayPal account in his name and that the account had been used to purchase access to websites distributing child pornography.

When ICE special agents conducted a search of Peters’ house, they seized his computer from a downstairs office and a CD from a DVD player in Peters’ bedroom. Forensic analysis conducted of the CD and computer’s hard drive discovered hundreds of images of child pornography in various subfolders.

Additionally, installed and re-installed on Peters’ computer was a software application for a newsgroup that contained subfolders with titles that focused on young preteen and teenage girls.

This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The case was brought as a 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; a part of Operation Predator, a nationwide U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative to identify, investigate, and arrest those who prey on children, including human traffickers, international sex tourists, Internet pornographers, and foreign-national predators whose crimes make them deportable.