Minneapolis, Minnesota - A former Minnesota National Guardsman was sentenced Friday to 210 months in prison for inducing a 14-year-old girl to create and send to him sexually explicit photos over the Internet while he was deployed to Afghanistan, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger of the District of Minnesota.
Andrew Schiller, 28, of Lakeville, Minnesota, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson of the District of Minnesota, who ordered that he also serve a lifetime term of supervised release and pay restitution to the victim. Schiller pleaded guilty to one count of production of child pornography on Sept. 10, 2015.
According to his guilty plea, between Sept. 23, 2013, and Jan. 12, 2014, while deployed to Afghanistan, Schiller contacted a 14-year-old female from Minnesota online and requested that she create and forward to him via the internet sexually explicit photos of herself. The victim did, in fact, send several images in response to Schiller’s requests, including at least one sexually explicit image. Schiller further admitted that he communicated online with numerous other minors and that he attempted to convince the minors to send to him sexually explicit videos or images of themselves.
The Army Criminal Investigative Division and FBI investigated the case. Trial Attorney Jeffrey H. Zeeman, formerly of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), and Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine T. Buzicky of the District of Minnesota prosecuted the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.