A Lynchburg man has been charged in connection with an international child pornography distribution ring, according to indictments unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville.
Jesse Leon Coleman, 47, of Lynchburg, was charged federally along with seven others from across the nation with conspiracy to distribute child pornography.
According to the indictments, a man known as Andy Danilov, using Russian web pages and several Russian email addresses, was the source of hundreds of sexually explicit images and videos featuring mostly young boys.
Coleman was also charged with receiving and accessing child pornography — an additional two charges. He made no attempt to request bond in Thursday’s hearing, court records show.
The investigation started in 2010 when FBI agents raided the home of an Indiana man in a separate child pornography investigation. Using information from that raid, agents identified a source of the images — identified then only by his screen name, Cinemaboy. They’re now calling him Danilov, although authorities admit they aren’t sure that is his real name.
Danilov’s email records showed between August 2010 and November, he regularly wrote the eight men, sending links to hundreds of images per email, sometimes also linking to explicit videos, per the indictment.
Of note, the indictment shows the images were hosted on the file-sharing site megaupload.com, a service shut down last month in an unrelated federal copyright infringement prosecution.
The men in the child pornography case are from as far away as Oregon. They include Thomas Syfor, 71, and Matthew Ackerman, 49, of Bethlehem, Pa.; convicted sex offender Peter Franklin Ortiz, 56, of Greenville, S.C.; former college professor Manuel Antonio Mares, 56, of Miami; Jeremy Hart Yost, 25, of the Coos Bay area of Oregon; and James Calvin Boyd, 58, arraigned earlier this week in Alabama. An eighth man is listed in the indictments, but has a common name and did not appear in court records to have been arrested as of Thursday.
A conviction under federal child pornography laws typically carries a sentence of five to 20 years in prison. Those with past sexual assault or child pornography convictions face a sentence of 15 to 40 years in prison.
No hearing dates have been set.
(Chris Dumond reports for The News & Advance in Lynchburg.)
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