St. Louis County Man Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison for Sharing Child Pornography

ST. LOUIS - U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark on Monday sentenced a St. Louis County, Missouri man who shared child sexual abuse material with an undercover police officer to eight years in prison.

Judge Clark also ordered James C. Astorian to pay $10,000 in restitution to the victims that have been identified in the images that he collected.

Astorian was caught with 6,110 images and 728 videos containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) after an investigation that began after Astorian shared multiple images and videos containing CSAM with a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officer via a peer-to-peer network.

Astorian told investigators that he had been trafficking in CSAM for about two years, according to a government sentencing memorandum, which also says some of the images were "notably violent."

Astorian, 40, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in March to one count of possession of child pornography.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, the St. Louis County Police Department and the FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson prosecuted the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.