Boone man sentenced 8 years in prison after using dark web to access child porn

BOONE, N.C. -- A Boone, North Carolina, man was sentenced to eight years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release Saturday for using the dark web to transport child pornography, according to the Department of Justice.

Jacob Elijah Kilgore, 29, was also ordered to register as a sex offender after he was released from prison.

According to court documents and evidence presented at the sentencing hearing, in February 2023, law enforcement determined that Kilgore was using the dark web to share over 150 videos and images depicting the sexual abuse of children. On Feb. 23, 2023, investigators said they executed a search warrant at Kilgore's apartment, seizing a homemade laptop that contained 11 integrated hard drives.

A forensic analysis of one of the seized hard drives revealed that it contained an extensive collection of videos and images of child pornography, with a running time of more than 66 hours for the video files, and approximately 55 gigabytes of storage space for the image files, according to the DOJ.

Investigators said some of the videos and images in Kilgore's library depicted children as young as infants and toddlers being sexually abused. During an interview with law enforcement, Kilgore admitted to accessing the dark web to download child pornography and using a peer-to-peer network to transfer child pornography to others.

On Dec. 8, 2023, Kilgore pleaded guilty to transportation of child pornography. He is in federal custody and will be transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation of a federal facility.

In announcing Kilgore's sentence, U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell said that the public should know that "this kind of conduct leads to long prison sentences."

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