SIOUX CITY – A Fort Dodge man who received child pornography was sentenced December 3, 2021, to 10 years in federal prison.
Billy Jack Canavan, age 48, from Fort Dodge, Iowa, received the prison term after an August 9, 2021, guilty plea to receipt of child pornography.
In a plea agreement, Canavan admitted that from April 13, 2018, to October 21, 2019, he received visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. In July of 2019, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received a cyber tip from Dropbox, Inc. of an account registered to a user in Fort Dodge that contained child pornography. The Fort Dodge/Webster County Cyber Crimes Unit executed a search warrant on the Dropbox account and seized a hard drive containing additional images and videos of prepubescent minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Canavan confirmed the Dropbox account belonged to him and he knowingly received the child pornography through the account. On October 25, 2019, law enforcement executed a search warrant on Canavan’s residence and seized a Google Pixel cellular phone, Samsung Galaxy J7 Sky Pro, a Cool Pad cellular phone, and Toshiba hard drive. Canavan admitted to using these devices to access multiple online accounts in which he stored child pornography that he had received over the internet, including inter alia MEGA Ltd, Kik, and Dropbox.
Canavan was sentenced in Sioux City by United States District Court Chief Judge Leonard T. Strand. Canavan was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment. He was ordered to make $15,000 in restitution to the victims. He must also serve a 5-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Canavan is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Mikala Steenholdt and Timothy Duax and investigated by Webster County Sheriff’s Office and the Fort Dodge Police Department.
