Springfield Man Sentenced on Child Porn Charges

A 25-year-old Springfield man has been sentenced to 15 years without parole in federal prison, followed by an additional 15 years of supervised release, after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.

Tyler Coons was arrested in 2014 after an investigation began when the father of an 11-year-old girl filed a report with the Greene County Sheriff’s Department. The father told authorities that his daughter had received inappropriate messages from Coons on Facebook.

Authorities executed a search warrant at Coons’ residence on July 10, 2014 and reportedly found him with a 17-year-old girl. The girl told detectives that she and another minor, whom she believed to be 15 years old, had engaged in sexual activity with Coons the night before the search warrant was executed.

In a press release, the United States Attorney’s Office says that an additional search warrant was obtained for Coons’s Facebook account and that Facebook provided investigators with more than 8,000 pages of private messages, many from young girls between the ages of 11 and 17: "During numerous Facebook conversations with girls claiming to be under the age of 18, Coons refers to exchanging naked pictures via social media, including Snapchat, Instagram and Kik. Frequently, during the conversations, Coons refers to the females as 'jailbait' and indicates that he is aware he is engaging in illegal activity."

Coons pleaded guilty on January 30, 2017 to one count of using a minor to produce child pornography and one count of receiving and distributing child pornography.