Iowa man who faked his death to evade police for 6 years sentenced to 20 years for receiving child pornography

A Des Moines, Iowa, man who had been fleeing police for years has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for knowingly receiving child pornography, the Justice Department in the Southern District of Iowa has revealed.

Jacob Chance Greer was also ordered to pay $12,000 to victims of the crime and will be forced into a supervised released for five years following his prison term. Greer will also be required to register as a sex offender.

In 2016, Greer was arrested on charges by Homeland Security but was released while he awaited trial. A month later, authorities found his abandoned car along with a suicide note near a lake. Approximately six years later in 2022, the U.S. Marshals' Fugitive Task Force became aware of information that would soon lead to his arrest in Spanaway, Washington, on April 4, 2022.

Greer attempted to avoid detection by storing illegal content online, as well as occasionally deleting files that were on his own devices, but he was found to have received, possessed, and distributed the disturbing evidence on the internet for several years.

Despite his methods, police found evidence of his receipt and trading of the illicit materials on numerous devices when they seized them from him in February 2015 upon the execution of a search warrant.

A United States attorney commented on Greer's years of fleeing federal charges: “Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our law enforcement partners, including the United States Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force, sex offender Jacob Greer failed in his attempt to avoid accountability for these serious charges involving the exploitation of children,” said attorney Richard D. Westphal.

The DOJ used an initiative called Project Safe Childhood to prosecute the offender, an "initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse" that started in 2006.

As well, the investigation stemmed from Project Hydra, a 2014 joint task force initiative that involved Homeland Security Investigations, and the York and Ottawa Regional Police Services in Ontario, Canada, which targeted those who produce and distribute child pornography on the internet.

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