U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake sentenced Roger Allen Repp III, age 45, formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland, Thursday to 25 years in prison, followed by supervised release for life, for sexually exploiting a minor to produce child pornography. Judge Blake also ordered that upon Repp’s release from prison he must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Acting Special Agent in Charge Timothy P. Groh of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Colonel Marcus L. Brown, Superintendent of the Maryland State Police; and Washington County State’s Attorney Charles P. Strong, Jr.

According to Repp’s plea agreement, Repp produced sexually explicit and lascivious photographs of a teen aged girl under the age of 16 via a pinhole camera he set up in the girl’s bedroom and bathroom, without her knowledge. Repp admitted that he distributed those images to other pedophiles via a file sharing program over the internet, in return for other child pornography being sent to him. Repp’s conduct was discovered during an undercover investigation of file sharing activities on the internet, when on March 11 and March 16, 2011, respectively, two separate undercover investigators downloaded images and videos of child pornography from Repp’s collection via a file sharing program. "If you get caught, people need to understand you can face spending most of your life in Federal prison," said Rosenstein.

As a result of the undercover investigation, a search warrant was executed at Repp’s residence on April 22, 2011, by members of the Maryland State Police Computer Crimes Unit. Law enforcement seized two laptop computers, an external hard drive and digital media. A subsequent forensic examination of the external hard drive revealed numerous files of child pornography, including 125 video files depicting the victim that were surreptitiously filmed by Repp. There were also several chat logs between Repp and others where he offered to share files of the victim and chats where Repp is looking for other individuals to share files with him.

"I think one of the important things that people need to understand about this case is that the penalties for these types of cases are extraordinarily severe," said Rosenstein.  "It's just awful to see what people are doing all day, sitting on their computers searching for naked photos of children," continued Rosenstein.