September 16, 10

NEWS / Vice President of Florida Corporation Pleads Guilty to 16 Counts of Transporting Child Pornography

WASHINGTON – Jeffrey Robert Libman, the vice president and co-director of Webe Web Corporation, a Florida corporation, pleaded guilty today to 16 counts of transporting child pornography, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance of the Northern District of Alabama.

Libman, 43, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge C. Lynwood Smith in the Northern District of Alabama. Libman faces a minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison per count.

According to court documents, Webe Web was the registered owner of the website “ www.childsupermodels.com,” which purported to be a child modeling website that promoted models 7- through 16-years old and their photographers. It contained hyperlinks to websites containing photographs of individual “child super models” featuring minor female children in various poses and wardrobes. According to court documents, Libman was responsible for building and maintaining these websites.

Libman admitted that the websites pertaining to 16 different children contained illegal images of child pornography. In some of the photos, the victims, all girls aged 8 to 15, were wearing underwear, lingerie, bathing suits and other revealing outfits, and were posed in positions that constituted child pornography.

According to court documents, viewers of the websites could preview a certain number of images for free on the website homepage. If viewers wanted to join the website to access additional photographs, they could purchase a 30-day membership for approximately $30 per month. Libman admitted that the websites depicting the 16 victims generated approximately $1 million in revenue.

Libman also admitted that Webe Web promoted subscriptions to these individual sites through its free advertising website known as Babble Club. On Babble Club’s website, members could receive a free sample of images of the children. According to court documents, the website encouraged the purchase of subscriptions to the individual websites of the children, and hosted discussion boards and groups which were devoted to each individual website. Babble Club members made postings to the discussion boards, which included comments on specific images they liked, the type of clothing and poses they liked, and poetry written to the photographed child. Certain members posted expressions of fondness and devotion for a photographed child.

In April 2010, Webe Web pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to produce child pornography and 16 counts of transporting child pornography. The president and co-director of Webe Web, Marc Evan Greenberg, also pleaded guilty in April 2010 to one count of money laundering based on his processing of the proceeds generated by Webe Web through its distribution of images of child pornography. According to its plea agreement, Webe Web will forfeit $1 million and 19 internet domain names.

According to court documents, the photographs of the 16 victims in this case were taken by Jeff Pierson, a former photographer based in the Birmingham, Ala., area. Pierson pleaded guilty in January 2007 to conspiracy to transport child pornography and transportation of child pornography. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 17, 2010.

According to his plea agreement, Libman was charged in an unrelated case in the Southern District of Florida. Libman pleaded guilty in September 2009 to one count of receipt of child pornography and was sentenced in November 2009 to 87 months in prison.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jim Phillips and Daniel J. Fortune of the Northern District of Alabama, and Assistant Deputy Chief Alexandra Gelber of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).

This case was investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The Document and Media Exploitation Branch of the National Drug Intelligence Center provided assistance in ascertaining the revenue flow of this criminal enterprise to support analysis of and to identify the ill gotten gains of the defendants.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-crm-1031.html

Tags: corporation, document,