A former City of Hampton employee was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for distribution of child pornography.
According to court documents, the criminal act by Robert Dobbins, 36, of Hampton, was discovered after federal authorities received information from a foreign law enforcement agency regarding the user “DEATHLYROSE55” on a website.
In September 2017, the user, later identified as Dobbins, responded to a foreign law enforcement officer working undercover and indicated “he had committed a hands-on offense against a child,” according to court papers.
He also sent the investigator a mega link, which contained child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Law enforcement linked the email address to a home in Hampton, and found that Dobbins was previously convicted of receipt and possession of child pornography in January 2005, while he was employed by the Navy.
Dobbins, who at the time was a city employee, “acknowledged accessing child pornography from his city-issued Samsung smartphone using the internet,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Dobbins admitted to federal agents he cut and pasted photographs from Facebook of his friends’ daughters and re-posted them on his website account, “DEATHLYROSE55.”
Dobbins also said he “traded” links to child pornography images and videos with other people he met online.
