A west suburban man has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for making child pornography and sharing it in online chat rooms.
Matthew Brown, 31, pleaded guilty last year to federal charges of production and transportation of child pornography, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.
Judge Sara L. Ellis handed down the prison sentence Sept. 26 and ordered Ellis to pay $80,292 in restitution to his victims, prosecutors said.
Brown, who lives in Montgomery, took photos of “a prepubescent minor” and shared them online through the Kik messaging application, according to prosecutors. He also possessed more than 240 photos and videos of child pornography.
He frequented chat rooms on Kik that were set up for exchanging child pornography, but one of the people he started talking to through the app in 2015 was actually an undercover police officer, prosecutors said. Brown sent the officer several explicit videos and images, including some he’d taken himself.
Brown is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
