A Maple Heights man is headed to federal prison for nine years after admitting he downloaded and shared thousands of child sexual abuse files, according to court records. Investigators say they pulled more than 3,000 CSAM files from devices seized during a search, including videos that prosecutors describe as showing the rape and torture of children as young as four, with some recordings running longer than an hour. Forty-four-year-old Anthony C. Hayes Jr. pleaded guilty in April to federal counts of receiving and distributing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Judge hands down federal sentence
U.S. District Judge J. Philip Calabrese sentenced Hayes to 108 months in prison and ordered 10 years of supervised release to follow his incarceration. A press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio states that Hayes admitted in April to receipt and distribution of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Investigators detail file-sharing probe
Court documents reviewed by investigators indicate Hayes used multiple peer-to-peer file-sharing programs over nearly a year to trade CSAM, and that agents traced the material to his home before executing a search warrant. As reported by WOIO, the seized collection included lengthy videos that showed the sexual abuse of very young children.
FBI led the investigation
The FBI Cleveland Field Office led the investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer J. King prosecuted the case, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Prosecutors brought the case under Project Safe Childhood, the federal initiative that pulls together local, state and federal resources to pursue online child exploitation cases.
Regional context and how to report
The sentence is one of several recent federal prosecutions in Northeast Ohio involving CSAM. Local reporting this week noted that a Beachwood babysitter received a 70-year sentence in a related case, per WOIO. Authorities say anyone who encounters suspected child sexual exploitation online can report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or through its 24-hour hotline.
