Boise-area man receives 30 months on child pornography charges

BOISE, Idaho – A Nampa man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 months in federal prison followed by five years’ supervised release for accessing with intent to view child pornography, after a probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Troy A. Paul, 48, pleaded guilty Aug. 16 admitting to viewing images of child pornography on a Russian photo sharing website several times between January and June 2014. Paul further confessed to viewing child pornography emailed to him approximately 100 times using the iPhone assigned by his employer.

According to the plea agreement, in March 2015 HSI special agents served a search warrant for the contents of Paul’s email account and discovered emails containing images of child pornography. Paul was arrested in 2015.  

“Criminals preying on innocent children via anonymous internet sites are not protected,” said Brad Bench, special agent in charge of HSI Seattle. “Our highly-skilled HSI forensic examiners, in collaboration with local law enforcement, continue to identify predators and hold them accountable for their crimes.”

The case was investigated in cooperation with the FBI and the Ada County Sheriff’s Office.

The charges in this case are a product of Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, and HSI’s Operation Predator, an international initiative to protect children from sexual predators.

Led by the U.S. 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 those who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.

Since the launch of Operation Predator in 2003, HSI has arrested more than 14,000 individuals for crimes against children, including the production and distribution of online child pornography, traveling overseas for sex with minors, and sex trafficking of children. In fiscal year 2015, nearly 2,400 individuals were arrested by HSI special agents under this initiative and more than 1,000 victims identified or rescued.

For additional information about wanted suspected child predators, download HSI’s Operation Predator smartphone app or visit the online suspect alerts page.