GREENSBORO – A North Carolina man was sentenced on July 22, 2022, to 360 months in prison, followed by a 15-year term of supervised release, for knowingly receiving child pornography after multiple tips to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) led to his arrest.
According to court documents, Timothy James Bryant, 27, was identified by agents from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NSCBI), after a NCMEC tip revealed that a Twitter user in Durham was suspected of uploading images of suspected child pornography to the platform in 2019 and 2020. In October 2020, the NCSBI executed a search warrant at Bryant’s residence where they located several items that contained child pornography. Bryant was arrested later that day on state charges without incident.
Subsequent interviews and search warrants revealed Bryant to be in possession of multiple devices containing over twenty-five thousand images and videos of child pornography. During the pendency of the state case, NCMEC received a new tip from Snapchat regarding suspected inappropriate conduct by a user that the NCSBI connected to Bryant in March 2021. A federal search warrant for Bryant’s phone revealed that his device contained additional videos of child pornography. At the time of his arrest, Bryant had been previously convicted of two counts of Third Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor in Durham County Superior Court in 2014.
He was charged by Indictment in the Middle District of North Carolina in April 2021 with one count of knowingly receiving and attempting to receive child pornography and one count of knowingly possessing child pornography. In September 2021, Bryant pled guilty to one count of receiving child pornography. In addition to his imprisonment and supervised release, Bryant was ordered to pay $133,500 in restitution to 27 victims.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Durham County Sheriff’s Office, and the Durham Police Department assisted with the investigation. This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kennedy Gates. It was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse. The initiative is led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), and focuses on coordinating federal, state, and local resources to better identify and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. www.projectsafechildhood.gov
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