BUFFALO — An Olean man was sentenced to more than a decade in federal prison for receiving child pornography.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York reported Friday that Shane Guay, 30, was sentenced to 144 months — 12 years — in prison and 10 years supervised release by U.S. District Judge John Sinatra Jr.
Guay pleaded guilty to the charge in December.
According to court documents, the case began in November 2016 after police departments in Massachusetts received reports from 15 sixth-grade girls who had received unsolicited messages on Instagram including sexually explicit text and images. A subpoena of records revealed the accounts were linked to Guay, then living with relatives in Olean. Massachusetts State Police contacted New York State Police in May 2017 to investigate.
In April 2018, the Department of Homeland Security was notified of two 12-year-old girls in Georgia who had received similar messages. Reports were also received from youths in South Africa who claimed to have exchanged similar messages with Guay.
Search warrants were executed by state and federal authorities on Guay’s home in May and June 2018. During the investigation, investigtors recovered 587 images and five videos of child pornography on electronic devices, including depictions of prepubescent children and violence.
In February 2019, Homeland Security Investigations Office of International Affairs South Africa spoke with a youth in Cape Town, South Africa, about discussions she and friends had with Guay in 2016 involving sexually-explicit images and text. Background details in the images matched Guay’s home, then in Jamestown.
Guay was charged April 17, 2019, and was indicted by a federal grand jury in May 2019.
