Bloomington resident pleads guilty to producing, distributing child pornography

A Bloomington resident plead guilty today to producing and distributing child pornography to subjects all over the world, Joe Hogsett, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said during a press conference Monday.

“A federal search warrant was executed here in Bloomington at the residence of Mr. Bostic, and it was discovered that David Bostic had produced child pornography on multiple occasions over the previous two year period,” Hogsett said.  

David Ryan Bostic admitted to producing child pornography showing four children ranging in age from two months to five years old. The prosecutors have identified 36 separate instances in which the children were exploited. All of the films were produced in Bloomington.

Bostic befriended the parents of the children to get access to their children, usually by offering to baby-sit for them. The parents were unaware of what was going on.

Bostic plead guilty to charges of sexual exploitation and conspiracy to distribute and receive child pornography. He faces a sentence ranging between 15 years and more than one thousand years in prison.

The investigation was “the most significant and extensive investigation” in the history of the Indiana F.B.I., according to Mike Welch, a Federal Bureau of Investigation officer who assisted in the investigation. The investigation spanned seven years.

The case involved “the most graphic and brutal type of child pornography that most would have ever encountered,” Welch said. Child pornography “is a significant problem in the state of Indiana,” he added.

Bostic was charged in federal court alongside five other individuals. Approximately twenty other people have been arrested in other jurisdictions in the United States and individuals in Serbia, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were also apprehended.

Bostic distributed the pornographic materials via email messages. Several of the email chains had as many as 77 recipients. The indictment against Bostic and the five others provided the subject lines and the names of the files attached to them, providing a graphic idea of the gruesome nature of the materials being sent.

Bostic was arrested on November 17, 2010 and has remained in custody since that time. The arrests involved the collaboration of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Indiana State Police, the Bloomington Police Department, the Kokomo Police Department and the Brownsburg Police Department.