Phillips Man Sentenced for Receipt and Possession of Child Pornography

United States Attorney Susan Lehr announced that Frantz Kolbjornsen, age 44, of Phillips, Nebraska, was sentenced on August 13, 2024, in federal court in Lincoln, Nebraska for receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography. Senior United States District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon sentenced Kolbjornsen to 72 months’ imprisonment. There is no parole in the federal system. After Kolbjornsen’s release from prison, he will begin a 5-year term of supervised release. Kolbjornsen has also been ordered to pay $18,000.00 in restitution.

NSP Investigators were investigating the BitTorrent network, seeking offenders sharing child pornography, when they identified a device at an IP address that had downloaded a torrent. This torrent was of interest to law enforcement as at least one of the 5,971 files had been previously identified as child pornography. The Investigator was able to connect with the suspect device utilizing the identified IP address and successfully downloaded 29 of the 5,971 files.  The suspect device was the sole source of download, and as such, each of the 29 files were directly downloaded from the suspect device.

An investigation into the IP address utilized by the suspect device revealed that the IP address in question had been leased to Kolbjornsen. The service address, phone number and email address tied to the account all belonged to Kolbjornsen. 

In November 30, 2023, a search warrant was conducted at Kolbjornsen’s residence in Phillips, Nebraska. Law enforcement seized a Samsung cell phone from the Kolbjornsen’s pocket, a Verizon Orbit cell phone, RCA Tablet and an HP laptop computer from the shed where he was located.

A search was conducted of the four items seized. In total, 163 videos and 638 images of child pornography were located.

This case was investigated by the Nebraska State Patrol.