Prairie City man sentenced to federal prison for child pornography possession

A Prairie City man was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison — and two years for revocation of his supervised released — for possessing more than 75 photographs and 250 videos of child pornography, the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Iowa announced Tuesday in a press release.

Anthony VanMeter, 55, was on federal supervised release for a past conviction of child pornography in 2016. In October 2024, law enforcement officials visited another individual under federal supervision and located VanMeter, who admitted two cellphones at the residence belonged to him.

However, one of the cellphones contained child sexual abuse material.

At sentencing, the court found VanMeter violated the terms of his federal supervised release. VanMeter had been given a seven-year sentence for the 2016 charge. He was released in 2022, and his supervised releases were revoked in October 2022, November 2023 and September 2024.

Following his completed prison term, VanMeter was required to serve 10 years of supervised release since there is no parole in the federal system. VanMeter was also ordered to pay $24,000 in restitution. The most recent case against VanMeter was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The press release stated the case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse lunched in May 2006 by the U.S Department of Justice. To learn more about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.

Project Safe Childhood is led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and uses federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.