iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
An Iowa City man and Indian American, Sameer Chandulal Patel, age 30, was sentenced on October 28, 2022, to 210 months in prison for the receipt and distribution of child pornography. Following his imprisonment, Patel was ordered to serve five years of supervised release, unless he is deported from the United States.
According to court documents, a cyber tip was received from a social media application indicating that child pornography had been uploaded to their site. “Further investigation revealed that Patel who was then living in Iowa City had distributed, received, and possessed over 18,000 images and 14,000 videos containing child pornography from 2016 to 2021. On June 17, 2022, Patel plead guilty to the charge,” said the Department of Justice in a press release.
US attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa provided details about Patel’s conviction and sentence on November 1. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety.
This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the US Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” 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.
The DOJ has urged people: “Any persons having knowledge of a child being sexually abused are encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821.”
