Buse pleaded guilty to a one-count federal indictment without a plea agreement. He faces a prison sentence of 5 to 20 years on the charge. Facts elicited at the plea hearing established that, from January to November 2016, Buse had been offering child pornography files to share over the internet through a peer-to-peer file sharing application. Undercover officers downloaded some of the illicit files and were able to track the IP address back to an address in O’Fallon, where Buse was living at the time. As investigators were preparing to execute a federal search warrant on Buse’s apartment, they discovered that he had moved to Staunton, Illinois, which is in the Central District of Illinois, and that he was still sharing child pornography from his new location. A second search warrant was obtained and executed at his Staunton home on May 10, 2017. Items seized during the search were found to contain more child pornography files. Sentencing is set for February 6, 2019, at the federal courthouse in East St. Louis. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Violent Crimes against Children Task Force, the United States Secret Service’s Springfield Electronic Crime Unit-Southern Illinois Cyber Group, the O’Fallon Illinois Police Department, and the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois and the Staunton Illinois Police Department also assisted in the investigation. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney James G. Piper, Jr.
-- Southern District of Illinois