Man gets 12 years in porn case
Ex-deputy admitted receiving explicit images of children
EL DORADO — A former Union County sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to just more than 12 years in federal prison on one count of knowing receipt of child pornography.
Justin Grant Crain, 38, of El Dorado was sentenced to 148 months in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release at a sentencing hearing Thursday in El Dorado, according to a release from Duane Kees, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.
According to court records, in April 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children forwarded information to the Arkansas State Police that images of child pornography were uploaded to cloud storage associated with a specific phone number. An investigation by state police and the Department of Homeland Security revealed that the images were uploaded by Crain.
At the time, Crain was a sergeant with the Union County sheriff’s office, where he had worked for nearly a year and a half. Before working for the sheriff’s office, Crain was an officer with the El Dorado Police Department.
State police obtained and executed a federal search warrant on Crain’s cellphone while he was at work and found more than 50 images of child pornography, according to court documents. Crain was arrested on a federal criminal complaint obtained June 3, 2016, for accessing the Internet with the intent to view child pornography and receipt of child pornography.
At the time of his arrest, sheriff’s office officials said Crain was fired from his position after the sheriff learned of the investigation the week before Crain’s arrest.
A subsequent federal search warrant executed by the state police and the U.S. Secret Service on Crain’s electronic devices found that Crain possessed approximately 850 additional images of child pornography at his home, according to court documents.
In June 2016, Crain was indicted by a federal grand jury and in March 2017 pleaded guilty to the knowing receipt of child pornography.
The case was investigated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Arkansas State Police Cybercrimes Unit, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service, the Union County sheriff’s office and the Arkansas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.