Arlington man who made child pornography, shared it online gets 50-year prison sentence

An Arlington man has been sentenced to 50 years in federal prison for producing child pornography and sharing it online.

Terry Ray Carter, 34, pleaded guilty in September to one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of transportation of child pornography. A federal judge sentenced him Friday to 30 years on the former charge and 20 years on the latter — the maximum time possible — with the terms to run consecutively.

Authorities began investigating Carter in June when a man in Kansas City, Kan., suspected of possessing child pornography said he had been chatting online with someone he believed was making child porn.

An undercover agent began communicating with that person, who sent images of child pornography and said he lived in Arlington and worked at a grocery store, court documents say.

When authorities subpoenaed IP addresses for that user’s account on a messaging app, one IP address they received belonged to a grocery store in Arlington and another was Carter’s home internet service, according to court documents.

The FBI searched Carter’s home in July, and he admitted to agents that he produced child pornography at his home and shared the explicit images on a social-media app, authorities say.

“The FBI will continue working with our partners to apprehend and hold child predators accountable for their actions,” Matthew DeSarno, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, said in a written statement.