Southwest Illinois man who collected, trafficked child porn is sentenced in U.S. court
A Randolph County man was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for amassing a large collection of pornographic photos and videos depicting children and sharing them on the dark web.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Illinois said Kory R. Schulein, 37, of Sparta, spent years downloading and storing more than 9,000 photos and videos of children being abused sexually.
According to the federal indictment, Schulein served as moderator of a dark web site that focused on child exploitation and was an active participant on several other similar sites. The dark web is collection of websites that require a special internet browser to access in order to keep their activity anonymous and private.
Schulein’s collection was discovered in 2018 when, during a special investigation of child pornography on the dark web, FBI agents were able to track his internet protocol address and executed a federal search warrant at his home.
One one website alone, Schulein had posted more than 13,733 messages, many of which included links to pornographic material from his collection.
Schulein was unemployed and had for years actively participated in online forums where he interacted with people who were producing child pornography, court records said. In addition, prosecutors said, he engaged in “a romantic relationship” with an 11-year-old girl in the United Kingdom.
Schulein pleaded guilty in April to the charge of knowingly receiving sexual abuse material over the internet. In addition to his 151-month sentence, Schulein was ordered to serve 10 years on supervised release and pay a $5,000 special assessment. He also has paid $12,000 in restitution to several of the victims.
U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn called Schulein’s actions “classic grooming behavior,” and said the 12-year sentence was warranted “because of the colossal and immensely harmful impact” such exploitation has on children.
Some of the victims depicted in images Schulein trafficked submitted statements to the court.
“Every time someone views this trash,” one survivor wrote, “he is once again making me re-live the most horrific part of my childhood. I can never truly heal....”
The mother of another victim also weighed in on Schulein’s trial with a statement.
“Thousands upon thousands of people, all over the world have access to images of our little girl during her darkest days ...” she wrote. “A person can download her image, create their own child pornography movie, share it with other monsters, or keep it for themselves to continually exploit our daughter in their own private bedroom.”
Knowing that her abuse is memorialized on the internet for people like Schulein to view and share “will shatter her soul,” the victim’s mother wrote.
The case was investigated by the FBI field office in Springfield with assistance from the U.S. Marshals Service.
Trial Attorneys Jessica Urban and Alicia A. Bove of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan D. Stump prosecuted the case.
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 5:21 PM.