General Law Newsroom

College Instructor Sentenced To Eight Years On Child Pornography Charges

R. Alexander Acosta, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Jonathan I. Solomon, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami Field Division, announced the sentencing today of defendant Edward Curtis Bobb, a former fine arts adjunct instructor at Miami-Dade College, following his conviction on February 15, 2007, on a two-count indictment for receiving and possessing child pornography, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2252A(a)(2)(B) and 2252A(a)(5)(B). United States District Judge Ursula Ungaro sentenced Bobb to 96 months’ imprisonment, followed by 5 years of supervised release.

In September 2004, the FBI in Oklahoma received information that the Internet website for the Great Plains Child Resource and Referral Center had been “hacked” with images and movies of child pornography. The FBI investigated the source of the child pornography, as well as those Internet Protocol, or “IP,” addresses that accessed it. The FBI determined that a particular IP address, which traced back to an AT&T WorldNet account holder in Miami, Florida, accessed and downloaded child pornography from the website on November 12, 2004. Information from AT&T revealed that Bobb was the account holder and that he resided in an apartment at 8 S.E. 2nd Avenue in Miami.

The FBI’s Miami Field Office obtained a search warrant and executed a search for evidence of child pornography on August 10, 2005. Federal agents seized multiple computer devices, including two Apple PowerBook laptops, two external hard drives, and a CPU tower. Bobb, who was in his apartment at the time, agreed to speak with law enforcement. He stated that he was an artist and a musician and that he engaged in “video painting,” which he described as the use of software and hardware to layer images.

Following a forensic examination and analysis of the computer devices, the FBI found more than 6,000 sexually-explicit images of child pornography, including seven child pornography movies downloaded from the GPCCRRC’s “hacked” website. The FBI also found on the devices about 2,000 files of pictures, many of which contained layered images of child pornography consistent with Bobb’s description of “video painting.”

. Acosta commended the investigative efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation Squad. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Jeffrey Tsai and Norman Hemming.