Cape Coral man sentenced to eight years for possession of child pornography
A Cape Coral man has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison following a guilty plea to possession of child pornography.
According to the State Attorney’s Office, investigators responding to a complaint that Warren Alan Baxter, now 54, had asked a teen for nude photos, found of hundreds of videos and images of minors engaging in sexual acts on his home computer and cell phone last July.
U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell sentenced Baxter on Monday. The court also ordered Baxter to forfeit his computer, hard drive, and cell phone, which he had used to facilitate the offense.
Baxter had pleaded guilty on June 20, 2019, the State Attorney’s Office said in a release issued Monday afternoon.
“According to court documents, on June 5, 2018, law enforcement received a report that Baxter had asked a 17-year-old boy to send him nude photos,” the release states. “On July 5, 2018, pursuant to that report and a subsequent investigation, officers went to Baxter’s home. During an interview with officers, Baxter admitted that he had images of underage girls on his phone, and he provided the officers with his computer, hard drive, and cellphone. A search of those items revealed more than 700 videos and more than 900 images of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Baxter acknowledged that he knew there were images of young children engaged in sexually explicit conduct on his devices and that he had obtained all of the images over the internet.”
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Innocent Images Task Force, with assistance from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Charles D. Schmitz and Yolande G. Viacava.
“This is another case brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse,” the release states. “Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.”