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Santa Rosa Man Gets 20 Years Federal Prison On Child Porn Charges
July 1, 2017
A Santa Rosa County man is headed to federal prison on child pornography charges.
Thomas E. Matassa, 24, was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release as a sex offender for receipt of child pornography.
In February 2016, a detective interviewed Matassa, who admitted to downloading child pornography online. A forensic examination of Matassa’s laptop revealed approximately 200 images of child pornography and more than 30,000 chat messages with underage males to exchange videos and images of child sexual acts. Matassa pled guilty on April 10, 2017.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the North Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Assistant United States Attorney David L. Goldberg prosecuted the case.
U.S. Attorney Canova said: “Protecting our children from exploitation is a top priority of my office and the Department of Justice. I commend the hard work of our prosecutors and law enforcement professionals who protect our communities and bring child predators to justice.”
“The FBI is committed to protecting children, who are among the most vulnerable in our society,” said Charles P. Spencer, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Jacksonville Division. “We appreciate the efforts of our many law enforcement partners in this case, and remain committed to working tirelessly with them to identify these predators, and find justice for their victims.”
“Matassa is a dangerous predator who was aggressively targeting young boys online in an
attempt to establish relationships with them,” said FDLE Pensacola Special Agent in Charge
U. S. Department of Justice
Christopher P. Canova
United States Attorney
Northern District of Florida
Jack Massey. “I thank our FDLE agents and law enforcement partners for their dedication and
hard work to take this suspect off the street.”
Comments
10 Responses to “Santa Rosa Man Gets 20 Years Federal Prison On Child Porn Charges”
Someone asked how a person can get 20 years for looking at child porn. On the federal level there is a manadory minimum. I personally have a family member who loaned a computer to a so called church in Pensacola Fl. It was raided and there was cp on it. The person highly suspected of putting it there wasn’t even questioned ( the dear Pasor). My family member went from a traffic ticket to Federal Prison. His personal computers had nothing at all illegal but the federal system is a failure. He had a public pretender who has not won a case in 37 years. Further if my relative had said he had a drug problem he would have got less time. He doesn’t and didn’t know this in advance anyways. Nice to get early release because you are doing drugs. Along with prison they also get a label of sex offender. A life ruined for loaning someone your computer. This pastor also sent cp material in the mail, I personally contacted the police. He denied it so case closed with that. Sex offender status use to mean something, now you can urinate in public drunk, get arrested and guess what, you are now a registered sex offender. They need to quit being over the top and saying everything is sex offender status. 18 year olds that sleep w 15 year olds because she says she’s 18 are a huge population in our prisons and will be sex offenders the rest of their life. I’m glad these laws weren’t in affect when me and my husband got together, I would have missed out on 40 years of happiness. Having being thrust into this world I have had the opportunity to speak to people who have done some horrible things. You know what they are happy the laws are targeting frivial things as it takes the spot light off them as there are not enough people to monitor everyone now. We have only created more problems and less safety for the children.
Dawn,
I totally agree. child molester should have a minimum of 20 years before they are eligible for release. If it is a family member or a child left in their care life!!. I also feel that if you are viewing this stuff then you are as guilty as if you were participating in the acts. And why not go after the people that are allowing this on the networks? Shouldn’t these information carriers be responsible for what they allow to be sent over their system or networks. At the least these search engines should be working with law enforcement to find and apprehend the people that are distributing and financing this type of information.
Go after the sources and you wont have it on the internet to begin with, you never hear of them being arrested.
What is up with these sick dregs having a love for kids? When I come to this site, there is at least someone arrested for it. Hang’em!
@Pat, the Cyber Commands of the Armed Services, not to mention National Security Administration; the most powerful hackers on earth!
Mr Trump could declare child porn a form of terrorism, target produces, place bounties.
The problem is simply that there are powerful low people in high places, with their hands in this.
Sentence is to light
Actually Pat you can remove things from the web. As for other countries yes you can block them too on a global scale just try visiting some Chinese or N. Korean websites….you cant N.Korea has their own interwebs and it is NOT connected to the www and China monitors and blocks theirs like a hawk. However most of these “kiddie porn” sites are FBI honeypots set up and monitored by our government. You have to go to some pretty scary places in the deep dark web to find ones that are not, and most people don’t know how. That is the reason lug nuts like the one in this article got caught. Now he is one less “viewer” off the street that probably would have become a perpetrator and actually have done something worse then what he has done there is your “silver lining”.
Same story different character… Why unlimited resources are not used on locate and prosecute the producers of this vile filth is beyond me.. Just think and visualize the actual production of this contect and all circumstances surrounding and what charges could be rendered for such demented acts… Would be nice to see the bigger perps getting some front page news coverage…
@429scj How? How do you remove material from the net? If that were a viable option I think it would have happened by now. This is also a worldwide problem and unfortunately we can’t force every country in the world to follow our laws. As long as there is money to be made by it it will continue. Sounds alot like the drug trade, doesn’t it? We try to go after the source when we can, and punish the buyers here. But child pornogrphy goes beyound money. It involves the most powerful human instinct, the sex drive. Only in these cases the normal drive to reproduce is corrupted into a desire for children. And a desire to share with other pedophiles. The web makes this easy. If only we could just “remove the material from the web”.
“Protecting children” ? Why not just remove the materiel from the net?