United States Attorney Joe Kelly announced that Corey J. Hayes, 32, formerly of Falls City, Nebraska, was sentenced today in Lincoln, Nebraska, to 9 1/2 years in prison by Chief United States District Judge John M. Gerrard, for receipt and distribution of child pornography.  After serving his prison sentence, Hayes will be required to be on supervised release for 10 years and register as a sex offender. 

In December of 2015, an undercover agent with the Department of Homeland Security was conducting undercover investigations on a chat site wherein a chat was initiated.  During the course of the online chat, the individual, later identified as Hayes, engaged in discussions to meet and have sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl.  Additionally, during the course of an online chat, Hayes transmitted a photograph of himself to the agent.  Hayes also sent other images depicting young girls, including images that depicted child pornography, using another chat application. 

In January of 2016, HSI agents received information from the chat application, which confirmed the location of Hayes as Falls City, Nebraska.  In July, 2016, agents executed a federal search warrant on Hayes’s residence and seized an iMac computer, iPhone 4s, and portable media storage devices.  After forensic examinations were conducted, one hundred fifty three (153) files containing child pornography were found on the iMac computer, including six (6) of the images sent to the UC agent by Hayes. 

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

This case was investigated by the Department of Homeland Security.