Source: United States Department of Justice News
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – On June 16, 2022, the Honorable Katherine A. Crytzer, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Tennessee, sentenced Shana Coffey, age 42, of Jefferson City, Tennessee, to serve 262 months in federal prison for producing and attempting to distribute child pornography, followed by lifetime on supervised release.
As part of the plea agreement filed with the court, Coffey agreed to plead guilty to a superseding indictment charging her with producing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and (e) and attempting to distribute child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2522A(a)(2)(B). Coffey will be required to register with the state sex offender registry in any state in which she lives, works, or attends school.
Coffey admitted that in April 2020 she used a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purposes of producing visual depictions of such conduct and, in June 2020, she attempted to distribute child pornography to others.
This prosecution was the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kolman represented the United States in court.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), 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 Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC 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 PSC, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
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