Man sentenced to prison in Salt Lake City child porn case

A Salt Lake City man who admitted to possessing more than 600 images on his computer of children being sexually assaulted by adults was sentenced to prison Tuesday.

Steven Nathaniel Snowball, 24, pleaded guilty in August to possession of child pornography. He was ordered on Tuesday to a mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentence by U.S. District Court Judge Ted Stewart.

Snowball was charged in U.S. District Court in December 2010 with felony distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography after an undercover FBI agent in Pennsylvania posed online as a person seeking to trade child porn.

The Pennsylvania agent connected with a user named Abstractinsanity, who was trading child pornography using file-sharing software, according to court documents. The agent determined the user had more than 2,318 files containing child pornography. The agent worked with FBI agents in Salt Lake City, who traced the user to a computer in Snowball's Salt Lake City home, court documents state.

Agents served a search warrant on Snowball's home and seized a laptop that contained child porn. Snowball admitted he is Abstractinsanity and that he distributed and received child porn, according to court documents.

Snowball was on a three-year probation for a conviction in state court of two counts of second-degree felony sexual exploitation of a minor when detectives arrested him on new charges in 2010. In that case, agents with the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force identified Snowball as a user trading sexual images of children online.

His federal sentence includes the stipulation that he register as a sex offender. He will also be on supervised release for life, Stewart ordered.

mrogers@sltrib.com

Twitter: @mrogers_trib