A Springfield man was sentenced to 151 months — about 12.5 years — in federal prison, followed by 25 years of supervised release, for receiving child pornography and producing obscene images of children, according to FBI Kansas City
. U.S. District Judge Megan Blair Benton handed down the sentence for 46-year-old Jeremy Koppenhaver on Wednesday.
The case began in a public setting that investigators say made the crime easy to spot. According to the Department of Justice, Springfield police apprehended Koppenhaver after a customer at a coffee shop in June 2024 noticed him using the shop's public Wi-Fi to generate explicit images of underage girls on his laptop and alerted law enforcement. Witness Gabrielle McGrath was the one who flagged the activity after seeing him altering photos on his screen, per the same filing.
Forensic Search Turns Up Real and AI-Generated Abuse Images
A forensic examination of Koppenhaver's seized computer uncovered 19 images depicting real child sexual abuse victims alongside more than 60 obscene AI-generated images depicting children, the Justice Department's account states. The search confirmed both genuine CSAM files and synthetic images created with artificial intelligence tools sitting side by side on the same machine.
Computer logs showed Koppenhaver entered specific text commands into an AI image generator to depict female celebrities — including Mila Kunis, Jenna Ortega, Alexa Bliss, and Willa Holland — as underage girls undergoing sexual abuse, according to the Springfield Citizen, which reported he actively modified his prompts to bypass the platform's safety guidelines. He also combined nude images of young girls with photos of himself before processing them with AI programs.
Jury Took Less Than an Hour to Convict
Following a two-day trial in federal district court in Springfield, a jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding Koppenhaver guilty of receiving child pornography and producing obscene visual representations of child abuse, per Talk KRMS's reporting on the case. The trial was heard under Judge Benton, the same judge who later imposed the sentence.
At Wednesday's sentencing hearing, Judge Benton imposed a 151-month prison sentence.
Prosecutors Point to a Surge in AI-Generated Abuse Cases
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Wan said at sentencing that she was concerned AI use was becoming more common, the Springfield Citizen reported.
The case was prosecuted under Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Department of Justice initiative created in May 2006 to coordinate federal, state, and local law enforcement resources against child sexual exploitation.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across Missouri
Koppenhaver's case is not the only recent Missouri prosecution involving AI-generated abuse material. In a similar case out of Manchester, Michael A. Huseman was sentenced in September to 18 years in federal prison after agents discovered more than 400 AI-generated child abuse images among 22,000 illicit digital files, with his case prosecuted in the Eastern District of Missouri. Together, the two cases illustrate federal prosecutions involving AI-generated imagery.
