A federal judge in Orange County has sentenced a Huntington Beach handyman to spend 240 months in prison for Internet transportation and possession of hard-core child pornography.
Quay Phipps–who employed the username “Wefucumjung” collected more than 20,100 images and admitted that he likes to view pictures depicting the rapes of minor boys–got a slight break from U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna.
Assistant United States Attorney Anne C. Gannon had sought an additional 52 months of incarceration, in part, because she believes Phipps is “remorseless.”
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During his January jury trial, Phipps did not dispute the evidence,
which included: He placed Internet ads for images of boys as young as 8
years old; used other screen names like “Ben Dover,” “anklegrabber” and
“illb,” which is short for “I love little boys;” and collected
“thousands of graphic child erotica stories,” according to federal court
records.
Instead, Phipps, who lived with his mother in the
trailer park, argued that anti-child porn laws should be eliminated
because it is, in his opinion, impossible for children depicted in the
images to be “re-victimized” when people later download the material.
H. Dean Stewart, Phipp's San Clemente-based criminal defense lawyer and the man who once represented corrupt ex-Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona,
told Judge Selna that his client deserved “far less” than a 180-month
sentence because he “merely viewed” images and “did not touch anyone.”
“[Phipps]
did not seek out minors or otherwise do anything more than view
images,” argued Stewart, who went on to claim that “empirical evidence
disproves the fear that the child pornography defendants, like Phipps,
will go on to molest children . .. He was a viewer, not a doer.”
Phipps maintains that he has a constitutional right to view any Internet material–whether it's the Pentagon Papers or WikiLeaks documents or kiddie porn–without government restrictions.
But
judges have recently approved “startling” increases in punishment for
child pornography possession, according to Stewart. He claims that in
1997 offenders received on average a prison sentence of 20.59 months.
Now, he says, the punishment has jumped to 120.1 months.
Stewart called the statistic proof of “unfairness.”
George Howell–an undercover FBI agent in Richmond, Virginia–made contact with “Wefucumjung” in February 2010, while using the GigaTribe file-sharing network.
An
investigation traced the suspect to a trailer that belonged to a
recently deceased 96-year-old Huntington Beach woman. Phipps had
repeatedly used his role a handyman to gain access to the woman's
computer to commit his crimes.
According to court records, Phipps
also admitted that he believes the federal income tax system is
“voluntary,” and that the doesn't like to work because his mother, now
retired, worked her entire life and “it got her nowhere.”
We haven't heard the last of the 43-year-old man.
Phipps–who has not yet been transferred to federal prison–swiftly filed
an appeal of his convictions and punishment with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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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.