United States Attorney Susan Lehr announced that Tucker Steven Harders, age 26, of Kearney, Nebraska, was sentenced October 3, 2024, in federal court in Lincoln, Nebraska for receipt and possession of child pornography and transportation of obscene materials. Senior United States Judge John M. Gerrard sentenced Harders to 96 months’ imprisonment. There is no parole in the federal system. After Harder’s release from prison, he will begin an 8-year term of supervised release and be required to register as a sex offender.
In October of 2022, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received a report of someone uploading photos depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. NCMEC then received another eight reports in January 2023 for the same account. All of the NCMEC reports included the IP address of the offending accounts. Investigation identified the subscriber as Tucker Harders at an address in Kearney, Nebraska.
In May,2023, the Kearney Police Department served a search warrant on Harders’s physical address. Multiple electronic devices were seized and searched. A search of one of the computers located over 10,000 images of child exploitive and age difficult images, of these, over 1,000 were confirmed child pornography and over 400 were identified via hash values as known to NCMEC. These specific images were located in the downloads folder and indicated a last accessed date of May 5, 2023. The images depicted children as young as three-years-old. A review of additional files located a multitude of chats where Harders would ask for, share, or offer to trade child porn with others.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals 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. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
This case was investigated by the Kearney Police Department.
