Bend Man Sentenced to Federal Prison for
Online Transfer of Obscene Materials to a Minor

Portland, Ore.—Todd Barton Campbell, 38, Bend, Oregon, was sentenced on December 4, 2008, by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones, to serve 18 months in federal prison following his July 21, 2008, guilty plea to the crime of transfer of obscene materials to a minor. The defendant was ordered to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on January 5, 2009. Upon his release from prison, Campbell will serve three years of supervised release.

On March 9, 2006, police in Bend, Oregon, received information that an individual in Chicago, Illinois, had posed as a minor child in a chat room and had contact of a sexual nature with a person who identified himself as a man living in Bend, Oregon. The information was passed on to the Portland FBI office where an agent assumed the identity of the person in Chicago, and engaged in multiple chats with the Bend resident, later identified as this defendant.

During the course of the chats, defendant and the agent discussed many topics, some of them sexual in nature and quite graphic. The chats indicate that defendant believed the undercover agent to be a juvenile female. On September 9, 2006, defendant sent a picture of himself to the undercover agent and offered to show a picture of himself disrobed. He then sent a graphic image of his genitals while sexually aroused. Since that broadcast to the undercover agent, defendant engaged in several more chats of a sexual nature. Specifically, it appears from the contents of the chats that defendant was attempting to entice the minor to engage in further sexual activity.

Based on the chats with the undercover agent, a search warrant was obtained to search defendant’s home. During the search of defendant’s residence, he agreed to give a statement during which he stated that the young woman he was chatting with online (in actuality the undercover agent) was under the age of eighteen, and admitted he had sent webcam images of himself.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nyhus.

 

 

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