April 18, 2011

A Wichita man who collected more than 1.5 million child pornography photographs has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

Donald W. Schmidt, 74, pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. In his plea, he admitted that he was trading child pornography over the Internet via a peer-to-peer network when a police investigator in Boynton Beach, Fla., downloaded child pornography from Schmidt’s computer.

In March 2010, Wichita police served a search warrant at Schmidt’s home in Wichita. They found two computers hooked up to separate Internet service providers and eleven banker’s boxes containing boxes of CDs and DVDs. Forensic analysis identified images of child porn on the computers, external drives and disks. Schmidt admitted using the peer-to-peer program to distribute child pornography, chatting online about molesting children and organizing his child porn collection to be stored on.

Schmidt once worked as a bus driver for the Wichita School District. He was removed from duty last year when police told school administrators about their investigation.