United States of America v. Richard Patrick Person

Cheyenne, WY - Cheyenne, Wyoming Resident Richard Patrick Person Sentenced for Possession of Largest Collection of Child Pornography in the United States



Sixty-three year old Cheyenne, Wyoming resident Richard Patrick Person was sentenced by Chief United States District Court Judge Nancy D. Freudenthal to 235 months of imprisonment, to be followed by ten years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution for possession of child pornography.



The Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC), using state of the art investigative techniques discovered that Person was using a sophisticated file sharing program to seek out and possess child pornography. They executed a search warrant at his residence located in South Cheyenne and seized several computers and numerous electronic storage devices. The computing devices seized from Person had approximately 47 TERABYTES of storage capacity. To put that in perspective, 1 terabyte holds approximately 1000 hours of standard definition video – or approximately 310,000 photos.



Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Mark Timmons, the lead investigator on the case, has expended over 400 hours analyzing the child pornography possessed by Person.



Agent Timmons has submitted to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) approximately 10 million files he believes depict children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He has an additional 7 million files that he is getting ready to ship off for analysis. The pornographic files possessed by Person include both movies and still images.



According to NCMEC and the National ICAC association this is the largest cache of child pornography ever seized in the United States.



Person has a prior conviction for sexual assault on a child.

Defendant was sentenced to 235 months of imprisonment, to be followed by ten years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution for possession of child pornography.