NASHVILLE, Tenn. – December 10, 2018 – Kendall Carter, 24, of Milton, Tennesee and Curt Cannamela, 41, of Hartsville, Tennessee, were sentenced on Friday in U.S. District Court for  separate child exploitation crimes, announced U.S. Attorney Don Cochran for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Kandall Carter was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, Jr., to 30 years in prison, to be followed by lifetime supervision.  Carter was indicted in 2015 and pleaded guilty in December 2017 to production of child pornography; two counts of extortion; and possession of child pornography.

According to documents filed with the court, Carter used a variety of online usernames to talk with multiple females online, including minor females. He would befriend underage girls online, exchange nude images with them, and then use a different on-line persona to threaten to expose the girls to others unless the girls took increasingly more graphic images including images of themselves engaging in sexual acts.  The victims included a 16 year-old girl living in Germany, where her father was serving on active duty in the military and a 12-year-old girl living in South Dakota.  During on-line exchanges with the 12-year-old, Carter represented himself to be a 14-year-old boy from Tennessee.   

In 2014, investigators determined that the IP address of the person communicating with these victims belonged to Kendall Carter who was communicating with the girls from Tennessee. 

A subsequent forensic examination of the Carter’s iPhone and iPad revealed that he was in possession of more than 100 sexually explicit images of other minor females.

In a separate and unrelated case, Chief Judge Crenshaw sentenced Curt Cannamela to 188 months in prison, to be followed by lifetime supervision.  Cannamela was charged in a criminal information in November 2017 and pleaded guilty in January to enticement of a minor; receipt of child pornography; and distribution of child pornography.

In March 2016, agents with Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) began investigating Cannamela after discovering email communications between Cannamela and what appeared to be an underage female.  After exchanges of child pornography were discovered, agents posed as a 14-year-old female.  Cannamela disclosed that he was actually 39 years old and lived in Hartsville, Tennessee.  Cannamela requested that they move their conversation to another platform and then moved their conversation to KIK, an instant messaging application.  Cannamela then sent images depicting child pornography to whom he believed to be a minor female and expressed his desire to travel to Laredo, Texas to meet her.

In August 2017, Cannamela purchased an airline ticket for whom he thought was the 14-year-old female, to fly from Laredo, Texas to Nashville.  HSI agents later executed a federal search warrant at Cannamela’s residence in Hartsville and seized laptops and other electronic media, which contained evidence of other victims of child pornography and child predators.  Agents were able to verify Cannamela had distributed child pornography through his KIK application and email accounts.

These cases were investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney S. Carran Daughtrey.