Google Hello to Trade Child Pornography

Vancouver Man Who Used “Google Hello” to Trade Child Pornography Sentenced to 6+ Years in Prison Defendant Traded More Than 3,200 Images of Child Pornography with Others


April 12, 2010 - JAMES EDWARD DAVIS, 44, of Vancouver, Washington, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 78 months in prison, lifetime of supervised release and lifetime registry as a sex offender. FBI agents executed a search warrant on DAVIS’ home in May 2008, after an investigation revealed he was exchanging child pornography via the “Google Hello” Internet file sharing program. The file sharing program has since been discontinued. At sentencing U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan noted that DAVIS had been investigated in 1998 in connection with child pornography. Judge Bryan said, “there is a substantial risk that Mr. Davis presents... in terms of viewing child pornography.”

According to records filed in the case, DAVIS was indicted for distribution of child pornography in April 2009, and pleaded guilty to the charge in October 2009. Records in the case reveal that DAVIS used the “Google Hello” online program to chat and trade child pornography. In two chat sessions examined by law enforcement, DAVIS traded 33 images of child pornography for another 197 images, while he and another person discussed the images. An analysis of DAVIS’ computer revealed that 731 of the child pornography images on the computer depicted known child victims in 31 series of images identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In asking for a significant sentence, Assistant United States Attorney Aravind Swaminathan pointed out that this is the second time DAVIS has been prosecuted in connection with possession of child pornography. DAVIS “is dangerous because he is obsessed with sex with young and prepubescent boys, and because he has demonstrated a consistent inability to control his admitted sexual deviancy,” Mr. Swaminathan wrote in his sentencing memo. “Davis’s own words reveal the extent of his obsession with sex with young boys. In particular, Davis’s conversations with other child pornography collectors—the chat logs contemporaneously recorded as Davis traded child pornography—show an obsession with young boys and fantasies of child rape.”

The case was investigated by the FBI, and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Aravind Swaminathan.