Jack Lee Nimrick

A Peoria man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of more than 100 images of child pornography.

Jack Lee Nimrick, 43, a convicted child pornography distributor and registered sex offender, was sentenced on June 24 to 10 years and one day in federal prison for possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. The extra day was for violation of his previous release conditions.

Nimrick had faced up to 20 years in prison on each of three charges in his 2023 indictment. In March, he pleaded guilty to a single count of distribution of child pornography.

According to an August motion by the government to revoke Nimrick’s 15-year supervised release on a 2016 conviction for distribution of child pornography, Nimrick was found in possession of “an unmonitored black Android smartphone” containing various images depicting the sexual abuse of children.

In 2016, Nimrick was convicted of the distribution of child pornography, including sexually explicit behavior by an 8-year-old child with an adult male. As part of his supervised release in May 2023, Nimrick was required to adhere to an array of conditions, including getting authorization for any cellphone he possessed and to allow authorities to install a content filtering and monitoring program on it.

But within a few weeks of his release, Nimrick purchased a smart phone without getting proper authorization. Prosecutors told the court that when two federal probation officers paid Nimrick an unannounced visit at his residence in August, he was found to be in possession of an unauthorized cellphone. Nimrick subsequently admitted that he used the cellphone to search for sexual images of minors, including cartoon images depicting the sexual abuse of children.

When asked how long he was in possession of the unmonitored and unfiltered smart phone, Nimrick reportedly answered, “about 2½ weeks.” The probation officers seized Nimrick’s phone for forensic investigation.

Several days later, Nimrick admitted to his sex offender treatment provider that he purchased the smart phone with the intention of searching for sexual images of minors, saying he hoped that doing so would “scratch an itch” and that then he would “throw away or dispose of the phone and it would be like it never happened.”

In September, Nimrick’s phone was forensically investigated by Homeland Security agents; over 150 computer-generated images were found, and over 50 computer-generated animated videos depicting the sexual abuse of children ranging in age from approximately 4 years old to teenagers. In all, over 500 obscene images depicting the sexual abuse of children and more than 40 videos depicting sexual abuse of children were retrieved.

Further investigation found that while Nimrick registered with Peoria police after his release from prison on his 2015 conviction, he did not register the phone number of his unauthorized phone, as required by law.

At the sentencing hearing this week, Nimrick also admitted that he had violated his conditions of supervised release by possessing the illegal images, failing to register his cellphone in accordance with the Sex Offender Registration Notification Act, and failing to comply with the U.S. Probation Office’s Computer and Internet Monitoring Program.

Nimrick, who has been in a Peoria County jail under custody of the U.S. Marshals since his arrest, will serve a three-year term of supervised release upon his release from prison in 2031.