A Citrus Heights man has been sentenced to 42 months in prison for possession of child pornography.
Nicholas Van Brocklin Trahan, 31, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. Trahan pleaded guilty to the charge in April.
According to the plea agreement, during August and September 2008, and in January 2009, law enforcement agents observed Trahan's computer offering child pornography for download through a common file-sharing network. Based on this information, a federal search warrant was obtained for Trahan's residence and executed Feb. 11, 2009.
During the search, agents found approximately 300 video files containing child pornography on a computer, according to a federal Department of Justice news release. The files were in the file-sharing program that law enforcement officers had observed offering files. A second folder created by Trahan on the computer and titled "nicksss" also contained images of child pornography, officials said.
In addition, evidence from the computer showed that Trahan searched the Internet for websites that appeared to be connected with images of minors. These sites had names such as "teen," "young" and "school girl" in their titles, according to the news release.
The case resulted from a joint investigation by the Sacramento Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The federally and state-funded task force is managed by the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department and is made up of agents from federal, state and local agencies.
The prosecution was part of the Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood initiative, which was launched to increase federal prosecutions of sexual predators of children and to reduce the number of Internet crimes against children, including child pornography and trafficking.
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