Georgia Man Pleads Guilty to Two Counts of Sending Child Pornography Over the Internet

MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that GERALD ALAN HARRIS, 52, pleaded guilty today to two counts of transporting child
pornography over the Internet. HARRIS pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court before United States District Judge SIDNEY H. STEIN. According to documents filed in the case and
statements made during HARRIS’s guilty plea:

From June 22, 2007 to July 13, 2007, HARRIS, who lives in Georgia, engaged in several instant messaging “chats” on the Internet with individuals purporting to be a thirty-three-year­ old mother in the Bronx and her twelve-year-old daughter. In fact, an undercover detective from the New York City Police Department was posing as both the mother and the daughter. During the course of these conversations, HARRIS sent the “mother” and “daughter” multiple images of child pornography, some of which depicted explicit sexual acts between minors and adults, via electronic mail. HARRIS also graphically described to the “mother” and “daughter” the sexual activities he planned to engage in with the mother and the daughter when they met in person.

HARRIS arranged to meet the mother and the daughter at a coffee shop in the Bronx on July 13, 2007. When HARRIS arrived at the prearranged location, he was arrested by agents of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and members of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”).

Following HARRIS’s arrest, FBI agents executed a search warrant for HARRIS’s residence in Georgia. The agents seized computer equipment from which multiple images of child
pornography were recovered.

During his guilty plea, HARRIS admitted that he sent images of child pornography over the Internet.

HARRIS is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge STEIN on February 29, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., and faces a maximum sentence of forty years in prison.

Mr. GARCIA praised the investigative work of FBI agents in New York and Georgia, and the NYPD. He also thanked the Bronx District Attorney’s Office for its cooperation in the investigation of this case and for its referring the case for federal prosecution.

Assistant United States Attorney CHRISTIAN R. EVERDELL is in charge of the prosecution.