SOUTHERN ILLINOIS — A 34-year old Beckemeyer man was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Southern Illinois to 45 years in federal prison child pornography related charges.

Miguel Angel Vasquez Torres had earlier pleaded guilty to a three-count indictment charging him with Production of Child Pornography, Distribution of Child Pornography and Receipt of Child Pornography.

Documents filed in the U.S. District Court establish that in May 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline regarding an individual who was uploading child pornography to a Photobucket.com cloud storage account.

A search of the Photobucket account revealed that the account belonged to Miguel Angel Vasquez Torres and that it contained numerous video and image files containing child pornography. During a subsequent search of Vasquez Torres’ residence, law enforcement officers seized two cellular telephones and numerous other items of computer media.

Vasquez Torres was interviewed by law enforcement officers and admitted to downloading and distributing video files containing child pornography. He also admitted that he had repeatedly sexually abused a minor over the course of several years and that he had photographed his acts of sexual abuse of the minor victim.

A forensic examination of Vasquez Torres’ iPhone 5 revealed approximately 22 video files containing child pornography that he had distributed and received using an internet-based messaging system. The forensic examination of his Samsung Galaxy revealed approximately 440 images which depict Vasquez Torres’ sexual abuse of the minor victim.

This investigation was conducted by the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Metro East Cyber Crimes and Analysis Task Force, and the Clinton County Sheriff’s Department.