Thursday, April 04, 2019

Joplin man arrested, pleads guilty to federal child pornography charge

On the same day that a Joplin man was arrested on charges of receiving and distributing child pornography, he pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.

Documents filed in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri indicate Anthony Pate has been in discussions with the U. S. Attorney's office for some time before he entered his guilty plea Wednesday afternoon.

Pate was arrested as a result of an investigation by he Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force.

Details of his crimes were included in a plea agreement filed Wednesday.








The Task Force traced child pornography distribution to an IP address that belonged to Pate. A March 2018 search warrant turned up child porn on Pate's devices and he admitted to investigators that he began looking at pornography in 2013 "and it just slipped from there."

Pate provided his passwords voluntarily and handed over all devices he thought might contain child pornography.

The forensic examination was completed in November and showed child porn on five devices.

A pre-sentence investigation was ordered. Pate could be sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison and faces a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Seems like crime is really high for a conservative midwestern town like Joplin. Compared to Chicago the rate of violent crime is higher in Joplin than in Chicago.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Chicago-Illinois.html
Look at the above site and then compare that with Joplin at a similar site. Chicago is rated in the top most violent cities, but the statistics, you know those numbers things broken down to even stats, shows that Joplin has an average of 555 to Chicago's 510 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Looking the Turner report today it seems we are getting a little on the "beastie" side of our city residents.