Sentence handed down for explicit images

COEUR d'ALENE - A 35-year-old Coeur d'Alene man was sentenced in federal court this week to seven years in prison for possession of sexually explicit images of minors, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge ordered Cyle A. Wyckoff to serve 10 years of supervised release following his prison term and pay $3,000 in restitution to one of the victims. Wyckoff pleaded guilty to the charge in December.

According to the plea agreement, in November 2008, a detective with the Coeur d'Alene Police Department developed information that a computer registered to Wyckoff contained child pornography on an Internet-based file-sharing network.

The detective connected to the file-sharing network and observed that Wyckoff's computer was making child pornography files available to others. The detective obtained a copy of the files and confirmed the images were child pornography.

In July 2009, members of the North Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force served a search warrant at Wyckoff's Coeur d'Alene residence.

Agents seized computer equipment, CDs and DVDs. Wyckoff, who was present during the search, admitted when questioned by agents that he downloaded child pornography.

He told agents that he deleted much of the child pornography he had downloaded, but admitted that some would be found on his computer.

The computer, CDs and DVDs were examined by a forensic examiner with the Intermountain West Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory.

The examiner found 49 still images and 65 video files depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. This included several videos of minors who were being sexually abused by adult men.

The images and videos recovered from Wyckoff's computer and discs were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to be analyzed by the child victim identification program.

That program's database contains thousands of digital images of known victims of sexual exploitation that have been seized from criminal defendants and collected from the Internet.

The database confirmed that images contained on Wyckoff's computer and discs were identified minors, including children from Connecticut, Utah, Washington state, Kentucky, Belgium, Germany, England and Russia.

"Crimes against children taint our communities and do harm that reverberates, at times, for generations," Olson said in a press release. "In Idaho, federal, state and local law enforcement officers work together in cases such as this one to ensure that those who traffic in these images are caught and punished."

The case was investigated by the North Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

The task force is comprised of local and federal law enforcement agents from the Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and Moscow police departments, the Shoshone County Sheriff's Office, the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Postal Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.