SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A West Plains, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for receiving and distributing thousands of images of child pornography over the internet, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Steven Edward Moffis, 31, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool to 15 years and six months in federal prison without parole. The court also sentenced Moffis to a lifetime of supervised release following incarceration.

Moffis, who pleaded guilty on April 23, 2018, came to the attention of law enforcement during an investigation of individuals making child pornography files available to others on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing program.

According to court documents, Moffis admitted that he had been addicted to child pornography for seventeen years.  Moffis admitted to law enforcement officers that he had an uncontrollable problem with child pornography.  Law enforcement located images and videos of child pornography on Moffis’s cellular phone.