Source: United States Department of Justice News
DES MOINES, IA – Jacob Chance Greer, age 27 of Des Moines, was sentenced today to 20 years in prison for knowingly receiving child pornography. Greer was also ordered to pay restitution of $12,000 to victims of the child pornography he collected and placed on supervised release for a term of five years after his prison term. He is also required to register as a sex offender.
Greer was originally arrested on federal child pornography charges in 2016 as the result of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations. About a month after he was released pending trial, Greer faked his death, leaving a suicide note by his abandoned car, parked by a lake in Dallas County, and absconded. The U.S. Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force developed information that led to Greer’s arrest in Spanaway, Washington on April 4, 2022.
According to court documents, Greer received, possessed, and distributed child pornography on the internet over several years. He tried to avoid detection by, among other things, storing his collection on internet-platforms, instead of on his own electronic devices, and occasionally deleted files on his devices. Yet child pornography and digital evidence of his seeking out and trading child pornography was found on numerous electronic devices seized from him on February 4, 2015, when law enforcement executed a search warrant at his residence in Des Moines.
“Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our law enforcement partners, including the United States Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force, sex offender Jacob Greer failed in his attempt to avoid accountability for these serious charges involving the exploitation of children,” said United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal.
The investigation started in 2014, as part of Project Hydra, a joint task force investigation by Homeland Security Investigations and the York, Ottawa Regional Police in Ontario, Canada targeting persons who produce and distribute child pornography on the internet case. Other agencies who assisted with the case include the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the U.S. Forest Service, the Royal Canadian Mounter Police, and the U.S. State Department.
The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa and Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Peyton Gaumer, as part of the United States Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Child” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nationwide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action, and public awareness in order to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children. Any persons having knowledge of a child being sexually abused are encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821.