A 39-year-old Columbus, Indiana man has been sentenced to 27 years and three months in federal prison for forcing a child under age 12 into sexually explicit acts, filming the abuse, and sharing the four-minute video on an online peer-to-peer network. Andrew Wade Case pleaded guilty to sexually exploiting a young child and possessing child sexual abuse material, and investigators said a search of his cell phone turned up more than 600 additional images and videos of prepubescent children engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
According to Fox 59, Case produced the video in December 2024, and investigators reportedly found the child living in severely neglected conditions in Case's home, sleeping on a floor covered in insects and showing signs of untreated lice. The station reports the additional material recovered from his phone included depictions of sadomasochistic abuse and violence against infants and toddlers. The Bloomington Police Department received an alert that Case had uploaded the video to the peer-to-peer network, which set the investigation in motion alongside the Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the U.S. Secret Service.
U.S. District Court Judge James P. Hanlon imposed the sentence, which also includes a lifetime of supervised release and a requirement that Case register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Federal and state law mandates that registration in every jurisdiction where he lives, works, or attends school, according to the Department of Justice.
How the Case Unraveled Locally Before Going Federal
Case's prosecution did not start at the federal level. He was first arrested at his home on North Lincoln Village Drive in Columbus in May 2025 after a months-long local investigation triggered by a tip about child pornography possession, per The Republic. At that time, Indiana State Police cited preliminary state charges including Level 4 felony child molesting, Level 4 felony child pornography production, Level 5 felony possession, and Level 6 felony sexual misconduct with a minor, and he was booked into the Bartholomew County Jail. That initial investigation involved coordination among the Indiana State Police, Bloomington Police Department, Columbus Police Department, Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department, Bartholomew County Prosecutor's Office, and the U.S. Secret Service, the newspaper's report noted.
The case was later adopted federally and prosecuted under the Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood initiative, a coordination framework between federal, state, and local law enforcement against online child exploitation launched in May 2006. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle M. Sawa served as the lead prosecutor representing the federal government in Case's conviction.
Officials Point to Scale of Digital Forensic Work
U.S. Attorney Tom Wheeler for the Southern District of Indiana said a child's home should be a sanctuary of safety, emphasizing that the severe trauma in this case occurred inside the victim's own residence. Special Agent in Charge Ike Barnes of the U.S. Secret Service Indianapolis Field Office noted that federal agents applied specialized cyber and forensic capabilities to evaluate the digital evidence recovered from Case's devices.
The volume of cases like this one is not small. The Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received nearly 30,000 CyberTipline referrals in 2025 alone, according to The Indiana Lawyer. Those tips are largely automated: electronic service providers trigger CyberTips to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when illegal file sharing is detected, and the tips are then routed directly to state-level task forces like the one managed by the Indiana State Police, per the Boone County CASE Task Force. That scale helps explain why federal prosecutors regularly step in on the most severe cases, particularly those involving direct production of abuse material.
Part of a Pattern in Columbus Federal Cases
Case's sentencing adds to a string of recent federal child exploitation cases tied to Columbus and the surrounding area. Hoodline has previously reported on a Columbus repeat predator snared in an online sting who received 31 years, another Columbus man who pleaded guilty after being caught with infant abuse videos, and a former Columbus firefighter sentenced to 80 months after seeking fake images of a girl. Just weeks before Case's sentencing, Hoodline also covered five men who drove more than 400 miles into a child sex sting in Columbus.
