A San Antonio kiddie porn collector, who amassed a huge collection of vile pictures and videos, will be going to prison for 25-years, Newsradio 1200 WOAI reports.
"I truly do need help. I want help and I will accept it," Cody Stoops told the Judge before being hauled off in handcuffs.
To give you the idea about the severity of the pictures seized by the FBI, it even turned the stomach of veteran Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Thompson, who had been able to secure jail sentences for the worst of the worst.
"I've done this for 20 years," she said in court. "Some of these images... even I have trouble looking at."
A plea deal took a potential life sentence off the table.
Stoops, 23, was busted as part of an FBI investigation that centered on the dark web. The Tor service can only be accessed through special computer programs, designed to protect the users identities. Agents were able to infiltrate and seize what is referred to in court papers as "Website A." They then used it to track down more than 200,000 kiddie porn collectors.
In court, prosecutors argued that Stoops used the site and some two dozen internet chatrooms to facilitate the trade of child porn. If people in the Kik chatrooms didn't share new and unique pictures of children being raped, they would be kicked out. That facilitated the rape of tens of thousands of children, Thomson said.
Those chatrooms are what led prosecutors to charge Stoops with running a child exploitation enterprise.
Not only did Stoops look up perverted pictures, the government showed evidence he also took his perverted fantasy to the real world, sexually abusing little girls during summer parties.
Stoopsâ extended family were in the courtroom to hear the detailed description of the pictures and videos which were so bad, at one point the judge told the prosecutor to stop talking about them.
"This has got to be the worst case I've ever had," Judge Xavier Rodriguez said.