Jackson man sentenced to 30 years in prison for child exploitation offenses
Jackson, TN – Peter Anthony Pappas, 41, of Jackson, has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for his online exploitation of several minors from January to March 2024. D. Michael Dunavant, United States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, announced the sentence on Thursday, March 26.
According to information presented in court, Pappas was federally indicted for using deception to manipulate several minors into providing him with confidential information which he used for fraudulent purposes. Specifically, Pappas used the information to gain unauthorized access to online accounts belonging to the minor victims – including social media, cloud storage, and email accounts.
Pappas then used the information obtained from those accounts to both exploit the victims and to target new victims. Pappas’s goal was to obtain sexually explicit images and/or videos from the victims, many of whom he knew were minor children.
Following his guilty plea to two counts of attempted production of child pornography, United States District Court Judge S. Thomas Anderson sentenced Pappas to 30 years in prison and 10 years of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system.
U.S. Attorney Dunavant said, “Production of child pornography is a disturbing crime that endangers and harms real child victims. We will always seek significant and mandatory minimum sentences for such despicable and predatory behavior, and this successful prosecution has incapacitated a real threat to our children and our community in West Tennessee.”
This case was investigated by the FBI Memphis Child Exploitation Task Force.
Assistant United States Attorney Josh Morrow prosecuted this case.
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