The Department of Justice announced today, that after a 6-day trial, Wrangell physician, 54-year-old Greg Alan Salard, was convicted of distributing and receiving child pornography.

U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler stated in a release that as a result of his conviction, Salard faces a maximum penalty for each count of conviction of “not less than five years and up to 20 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, a five-year to life term of supervised release, and a $100 special assessment.”

It was in May of 2014 that the FBI began investigating Salard and his involvement with a peer-to-peer file sharing network. P2P networks are known for trading digital contraband such as copyrighted movies, music and books. P2P networks also are known to deal in file sharing of child pornography. It was this pornography that agents linked Salard to in May of that year.

In June of 2014, agents with the FBI were able to link to Salards IP address and managed to download a portion of a four-minute video that depicted “an adult male molesting a four-year-old child,” the Department of Justice revealed. It was later, in October, that Salard’s computer was observed on the network making available child pornography files to other users.

It was on October 15th, that agents requested and obtained a search warrant for Salard’s residence. Law enforcement watched that day as Salard’s wife left the residence, resulting in Salard being the only one in the house. Soon afterward, as they monitored his Internet activity, they observed Salard signing on to his P2P network and his IP address begin offering a file depicting child pornography with sex scenes showing prepubescent children.

10 minutes after Salard began distributing files, police knocked on his door. It took Salard eight minutes to finally answer the door. During that time, Salard was deleting and erasing files, including the file that police that police observed Salard  distributing just minutes earlier. Salard had wiped approximately 35% of the file before police were able to stop the program.

But, police seized the computer and a forensic computer examiner was able to recover the partially erased file from Salard’s equipment as well as evidence that the file had been viewed on the computer. Evidence of searches for child pornography was also obtained. In addition, evidence was found that Salard had downloaded more than five hundred child pornography files from the P2P networks between February and October of 2014. Also noted was the fact that Salard had attempted to delete evidence of his illegal activities on the Internet at least four times during that period, Loeffler stated.

Following his sentencing in this case in October of this year, Salard is expected to be extradited to Louisiana to face charges of Aggravated Rape in Caddo Parish. It is alleged that Salard commited oral intercourse with a child under the age of 13. He was served with that warrant in early April while he was incarcerated at Lemon Creek Correctional Center awaiting trial.

  Alaska, child, conviction, federal jury, greg salard, investigation, louisiana, networks, p2p, peer to peer, pornography, wrangell