Former minister sentenced to 17 years on child porn charges
By Travis Measley | Published Thursday, July 2, 2009
Steve Richardson, former pastor of the Boyd First United Methodist Church, has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison after pleading guilty in March to two charges relating to child pornography.
Steve Richardson, former pastor of the Boyd First United Methodist Church, has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison after pleading guilty in March to two charges relating to child pornography. In addition, Richardson will also be forced to register as a sex offender and serve a lifetime of supervised release.
Richardson, 36, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents Sept. 24, 2008, after a 10-month investigation that revealed Richardson was using an Internet service program from Google called "Hello," a peer-to-peer sharing program that allows users to trade images quickly across the Web, much like an instant messaging program. Richardson was pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Royse City at the time.
According to an affidavit filed by an ICE agent, on Dec. 20, 2007, Richardson used the Hello program to distribute an image of child pornography to an undercover officer. The affidavit states that this again occurred Feb. 1, 2008.
Agents also executed search warrants on other possible child pornographers in late 2007 and found computer files with pornographic images of children and infants sent from a Hello user name "cowboysspades," the name Richardson has admitted to using.
Richardson also admitted to having traded child pornography with other Google Hello users and that he possessed more than 600 images of child pornography.
Richardson served as the pastor in Boyd for about five years until September 2006, when he moved to Royse City, where he served as pastor of the First United Methodist Church until his arrest in September 2008.
