A man from Southern Illinois who was a moderator for a child sexual abuse material website has been sent to federal prison for 12 years and 7 months.
The 37 year old Sparta resident Kory R. Schulein was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2020 on a single count of knowingly receiving child sexual abuse material over the internet.
Prosecutors said the unemployed man from Randolph County spent years downloaded, shared, and stored videos and images of minors who were being sexually assaulted.
According to the indictment, in addition to being a moderator on a CSAM-focused website, Schulein was an active user of other dark net websites offering similar content.
Law enforcement first became aware of Schulein in 2018 during an FBI investigation of child sexual abuse material on tor. A federal search warrant was executed at this house on October 1, 2019, after agents tracked his IP address.
Child Sexual Abuse Material was discovered by officers on a laptop computer and two external hard drives belonging to Schulein. The illegal and explicit content was downloaded from 2016 to 2019, according to court documents.
More than 9,000 images and videos of Child Sexual Abuse Material were stored by Schulein on an encrypted hard drive.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) confirmed the identities of some of the minors depicted in the more than 2,500 images and 100 videos found in Schulein’s possession.
Schulein was found to have posted 13,733 messages on dark websites that were focused on Child Sexual Abuse Material. Many of his posts included links to videos and images of children being sexually abused.
The investigation was carried out by FBI-Springfield in collaboration with the United States Marshals Service. The case against him was brought as part of the nationwide initiative Project Safe Childhood.
On April 29, 2021, Schulein pleaded guilty to knowingly receiving Child Sexual Abuse Material over the internet. Earlier today, he was sentenced to 151 months, or 12 and a half years, in prison.
Child Abuse by Schulein
The Judge Stephen McGlynn, when sentencing Schulein, said that the images and videos collected by the offender showed children in bondage and adults raping children, including 5 year old girls and toddlers.