Man sentenced to prison for downloading over 100 files of child pornography

IDAHO FALLS — A 25-year-old man is going to prison after pleading guilty to downloading child pornography.

Trustin McMurphy was sentenced Monday by District Judge Dane Watkins Jr. for two counts of possessing child sexually exploitative material. For one of the charges, McMurphy was given a minimum of two and a maximum of 10 years in prison; he was sentenced to no minimum but a maximum of five years in prison for the other.

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The two prison sentences will run consecutively, one after the other. McMurphy will receive credit for time served.

He will also be required to register as a sex offender and pay over $10,000 in court fines and fees.

McMurphy initially pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of willfully possessing or accessing child pornography. Then in November, he accepted a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to two counts in exchange for the prosecution agreeing to drop the remaining eight charges.

The case

According to court documents, Google submitted a cyber tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Jan. 30, 2024, regarding seven files of child pornography that had reportedly been uploaded to an account. Police say the associated Google account was owned by McMurphy.

Idaho Falls police detectives were granted a search warrant for the account, where they say they found 12 files containing child pornography.

According to police reports, detectives also found multiple videos of a group of people hiking, in which the hikers are referring to the person filming them as “Trustin.”

Detectives served a search warrant on McMurphy’s house on Sept. 25, where they reportedly seized a Samsung cellphone and a desktop PC.

After searching the contents of both devices, detectives say they found 135 more files of child pornography showing children between the ages of 2 and 14 being raped.

While the search warrant was being executed, McMurphy was taken to the police station where he reportedly admitted to owning the Google account and to “accessing, downloading, viewing and saving files that contain (child pornography),” according to court documents.

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