A federal judge this month sentenced an Orange County man to a prison term of 210 months for distributing child pornography on the Internet.
Billie Joe Harris, Jr., a 53-year-old Santa Ana pest control company employee, received the harsh sentence largely because he was already a felon convicted from 1987 case involving lewd and lascivious contact with a minor.
A 2014 federal grand jury indictment alleged that Harris used Gigatribe file sharing software to unwittingly allow an undercover FBI agent access to images of children engaging in sex acts, including a video titled, “7YO brother [screws] my 13YO,” according to court records.
Harris signed a December 2014 plea agreement acknowledging he possessed 62 child porn videos, some of which depicted kids involved in sadistic and masochistic activities.
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Federal prosecutors noted the defendant's lousy childhood, quick admission of guilt and current medical woes, but still determined he deserved a 17.5-year stint in prison because of the seriousness of the case.
U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner also ordered Harris to endure lifetime supervision upon his emergence back into society. For the remainder of his life he won't be allowed within 100 yards of a place where children routinely congregate; must give federal agents all his online passwords, residential location and employment whereabouts;
and can't have any communication whatsoever with anyone under 18 years of age without the government's permission.
This inmate is presently housed at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, where Klausner hopes he receives mental health assistance.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.