Source: Office of United States Attorneys
NEW ORLEANS, LA – Acting U.S. Attorney Michael M. Simpson announced that JOSEPH AUTHEMENT (“AUTHEMENT”), age 25, of Hammond, LA, was sentenced on April 16, 2025, for Receipt of Materials Involving the Sexual Exploitation of Minors, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 2252(a)(2) and (b)(1).
According to court documents, on March 11, 2024, Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) obtained a federal search warrant to seize AUTHEMENT’s Apple iPhone. On March 12, 2024, HSI special agents (“SA”) located AUTHEMENT at his residence in Hammond, LA. The agents seized AUTHEMENT’s iPhone and located images and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of minors on that phone. SAs later determined AUTHEMENT used a messaging application to download and purchase child sex abuse materials.
United States District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo sentenced AUTHEMENT to sixty (60) months imprisonment, supervised release for (10) ten years upon release from imprisonment and payment of a $100 mandatory special assessment fee.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office would like to acknowledge the assistance of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Rio Grande Valley Child Exploitation Investigations Task Force. The prosecution of this case is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian M. Klebba, Chief of the Financial Crimes Unit.