(Sioux City)– A Lake Park man has pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa says 44-year-old Chris Kurt entered the plea earlier this week.
During a plea hearing, Kurt admitted to receiving and possessing over 103 videos and 132 images of child porn that was backed up on cloud storage.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant on Kurt’s residence in Lake Park and seized several electronic devices. Federal prosecutors say a forensic review of the devices located an additional cache of over 10,000 images and over 1,000 videos of child sexual abuse, some of them involving prepubescent minors. Kurt told agents he didn’t know how much child porn would be on his devices because he had downloaded so much over the years.
Kurt will be sentenced once a pre-sentence report is completed. He remains in the custody of a U.S. Marshal in the meantime. He faces up to 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, along with five years of supervised release.
The 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.
The case was investigated by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Lake Park Police Department and the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office.
