A North Texas man will have plenty of time to reflect upon his actions now that a federal judge sentenced him to spend the next 90 years in prison for enticing local children to perform sexual acts in pornographic videos he produced.
The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Erin Nealy Cox, announced Monday that U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor handed down to Timothy Paul Malone a sentence of 90 years, the result of three consecutive terms of 360 months, or 30 years, for each of the child pornography convictions he previously received on two counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a child.
Federal court documents filed in the case stated Malone, 39, coaxed two young children into engaging in sexually explicit activities in his home in River Oaks, a Fort Worth suburb, as well locations in the nearby communities of Watauga and Haslet where the two minor victims apparently resided. Malone then filmed the children using cell phones and a camera.
Some of the videos recovered by law enforcement agents showed an adult performing sex acts on the children while another displayed a young girl undressing and changing into a bathing suit. Malone committed these child pornography offenses in 2011, 2014, and 2016, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He also attempted to lure a third child into performing sex acts on camera.
In January 2017, River Oaks police seized several electronic devices from Malone’s home after obtaining a search warrant. A forensic examination of the devices revealed numerous pornographic videos and images of children including the two youngsters from Watauga and Haslet. Tarrant County sheriffs arrested Malone on January 23 on the then alleged two counts of child exploitation charges and one count of attempted child exploitation. He was later released from the Tarrant County jail for a short period of time, although, once indicted in September, Malone remained in federal custody until his sentencing this week.
Malone pleaded guilty on November 15 to the two counts of sexual exploitation of the children and one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a child. At the time, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicated Malone faced a maximum sentence of up to 90 years plus a lifetime of supervised release to follow after completing his prison term. He was also subject to a potential penalty of up to $750,000. Malone, ultimately, received the maximum prison sentence.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the River Oaks Police Department, and the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Digital Forensics Unit investigated this case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.
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