CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - A 54-year-old Corpus Christi resident and registered sex offender has been ordered to federal prison for possession of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick. Robert Kirby Anderson aka Bobby Bonez pleaded guilty April 15, 2019.

Today, Senior U.S. District Judge John D. Rainey sentenced Anderson to 140 months in prison. At the hearing, the court heard Anderson possessed pornographic images of children on three different devices. Anderson had also altered children’s coloring books by adding captions above the cartoon children requesting to engage in sexual acts with him. Additionally, the court heard that Anderson, a registered sex offender since the late 1990s, had been staying in a residence with a minor child at the time of his arrest. 

Anderson was further ordered to serve 10 years on supervised release following completion of his prison term, during which time he will have to comply with numerous requirements designed to restrict his access to children and the internet. He will also be ordered to continue registering as a sex offender.

In October 2018, an alert private citizen found a cell phone that had apparently been accidentally dropped in a parking lot. The citizen attempted to access the contacts on the phone to determine its owner, at which time she saw the pornographic images of children. The phone was turned over to local law enforcement and eventually linked directly to Anderson.

When law enforcement attempted to arrest him at the address he claimed as his residence on his sex offender registration documents, they found him not living there. Authorities located him within 24 hours where he was found to be alone in the home with a young child.

Within two weeks of the his discovered lost phone, Anderson was in custody. At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of a new phone. It was also forensically analyzed and found to contain more than 500 images of child pornography collected in just the previous two weeks.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and Corpus Christi Police Department’s – Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force conducted the investigation with the assistance of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brittany L. Jensen is prosecuting the case, which was 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. 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. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources."