United States of America v. Todd Schannen Pearson

Missoula, Montana criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with Receipt of child pornography

Receipt of child pornography sends Indiana man to prison for 10 years

An Indiana man who admitted to possessing child pornography after investigators in Bozeman found thousands of images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct on his cell phon.



Todd Schannen Pearson, 55, of Indianapolis, Indiana, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to possession of child pornography.



The government alleged in court documents that in June 2020, Verizon reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that a user had uploaded to its cloud storage five files that depicted a prepubescent minor engaged a lascivious display of her genital area. An investigation by the Bozeman Police Department determined that Pearson owned the account and that he had uploaded other images to Verizon's cloud storage. In September 2021, Bozeman police seized a cell phone from Pearson's person in Bozeman, and a forensic analysis revealed Pearson's phone contained at least an additional 10,002 images and 84 videos of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. These images were transported to Pearson's cell phone using the internet.



The U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted the case. The Bozeman Police Department, Montana Division of Criminal Investigation and Montana Sexual and Violent Offender Registry conducted the investigation.



This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit Justice.gov/PSC.