Man, 48, sentenced for downloading child porn

A 48-year-old Columbus, Ga., man was sentenced Monday to seven and a half years in federal prison and a 15-year term of supervised release for receiving child pornography over the Internet.

Alfredo Townsend was also ordered to register as a sex offender and forfeit his computer media. Townsend pleaded guilty to the charge in February and has been in custody since his arrest on May 3, 2011.

According to court documents, in February 2011, an undercover officer with the Florida Attorney General's Office connected to the Internet to identify people using a particular computer network to share files containing child pornography. For several weeks, the undercover officer was able to track a computer that was sharing files containing child pornography, and the computer belonged to Townsend.

The computer was using different Internet connections at several locations, including Townsend's permanent home in Columbus, his apartment in Jacksonville, and a temporary housing unit on Robins Air Force Base in Georgia.

According to court documents, on May 3, 2011, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at Townsend's apartment on Kernan Boulevard in Jacksonville. During an interview, Townsend indicated that he traveled to Georgia about every two weeks and admitted to using other unsecured wireless networks.

Townsend admitted that he started downloading child pornography out of "sick curiosity" and that he had been downloading child pornography prior to the middle of 2009. He stated that there were images of children as young as 1 year old and up to 15 years old on his computer and admitted that he primarily looked at prepubescent children.

A search of Townsend's laptop computer revealed that it contained 27 images and 245 videos of child pornography, all downloaded during the period from Aug. 27, 2009 to May 3, 2011.