ST. LOUIS — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), published as received.
ST. LOUIS – A man from Clayton, Missouri who sought and received nude pictures of minors, including pictures of an 11-year-old from Kentucky, was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in federal prison followed by the remainder of his lifetime on supervised release.
U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White also ordered Jason W. Fine, 50, to pay a $50,000 fine and special assessments of $45,000 that will go into a fund for victims and prevention programs. Judge White called Fine’s case the worst case of its type that he’d encountered.
Fine pleaded guilty in November to two felonies: soliciting child pornography and receiving child pornography.
Fine admitted as part of his plea that between July 1, 2021 and Sept. 2, 2021, while pretending to be an 11-year-old girl, he requested and received nude pictures of the 11-year-old Kentucky girl on Kik Messenger.
In an interview with law enforcement on June 14, 2022, Fine said he had communicated online with multiple minors and that a few had sent him child pornography.
In court Wednesday, the victim’s mother told Judge White what it was like to discover that Fine preyed on her daughter by posing as a girl “doing horrific things and asking our daughter to do those same things,” the mother said.
The discovery of his crime wreaked “absolute devastation” on the victim and her family, the mother said, asking for serious prison time for Fine. “Knowing he is behind bars ensures that he can’t take advantage of young girls. He can't prey upon them and use them as toys. He can't manipulate them, solicit or use them,” she wrote in a letter to Judge White.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson pointed out that Fine used his undergraduate degree in psychology to manipulate children into sending him pictures and videos, and did not assist law enforcement in identifying his other victims so they could be helped. Anderson said Fine’s supporters described his crime as pornography addiction, but “It is pedophilia. It is sadistic child abuse.”
The St. Louis County Police Department the Campbell County (Kentucky) 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 www.justice.gov/psc.
