August 9, 11

NEWS / Facebook Fake Pleads Guilty to Receipt of Child Pornography

OKLAHOMA CITY—DANIEL LESLIE MOONEYHAM, 32, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, pled guilty today to receipt of child pornography depicting a 15-year-old boy, announced Sanford C. Coats, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

According to court records, Mooneyham, using a fake Facebook profile, pretended to be an attractive 18-year-old blonde female named “Terri Smith.” Posing as Terri Smith, Mooneyham would send Facebook “friend” requests to teenage boys, some of whom he knew through church youth group and a youth camp. After establishing a Facebook “friendship” with teenage posing as Terri Smith, Mooneyham would solicit nude pictures in exchange for sexually explicit photos of Terri Smith. Mooneyham would direct them to text or e-mail their nude pictures to a Yahoo! e-mail account that he had created for his Terri Smith Facebook profile. Mooneyham received nude pictures via e-mail from at least three minors. The pictures of Terri Smith that Mooneyham sent the boys depicted an unknown female that Mooneyham had found on the Internet. During the investigation, Mooneyham, posing as Terri Smith, also solicited a sexually explicit photo from an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a 15-year-old boy on Facebook.

The FBI arrested Mooneyham on July 14, 2011, a few days before he was scheduled to return to an Oklahoma youth camp with a church youth group. Mooneyham is currently in federal custody. United States District Judge Timothy D. DeGiusti will sentence Mooneyham in approximately 90 days. He faces not less than five years and up to 20 years in federal prison.

This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, the flagship program in the Department of Justice’s National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, and was the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Hale.

http://www.fbi.gov/oklahomacity/press-releases/2011/facebook-fake-pleads-guilty-to-receipt-of-child-pornography

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