Arlington man is sentenced to six months for having child pornography on his cellphone
An Arlington man who held on his cellphone an image of two nude prepubescent boys engaged in sexually explicit conduct was sentenced on Thursday to six months in prison.
Andy Haas, 25, is a computer programmer and led a middle school boys’ youth group at a church, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Haas in June pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to possession of child pornography. The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him in April with transporting a depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct via interstate commerce.
Beyond the prison term, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman sentenced Haas to a supervised release period of 10 years.
Haas used a chat application to share photographs of nude children, federal prosecutors alleged in the April filing.
Kik, the messaging app company, flagged the images as having hash values associated with known child pornography and reported them to law enforcement. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations special agent subpoenaed the subscriber information for the IP address associated with the upload and traced it to Haas, the prosecutors alleged.
Haas admitted under questioning that he used Kik to share about 100 pornographic images of children, some as young as 8- or 9-years-old, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He said he obtained the images from Kik group chats during the past two years.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to release the name of the church through which Haas led a youth group. Pittman ordered Haas to arrive at a prison no later than Jan. 12.
