A former Columbia man entered a guilty plea this week to federal child pornography charges, it was announced Friday.

Stephen R. Wigginton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, said Dan Stephen Daniels, 59, formerly of Columbia, entered the plea on a two-count indictment charging him with receipt of child porn and possession of pre-pubescent child porn.

On the first charge, Daniels faces a prison term of five to 20 years, a fine of up to $250,000 and supervised release. On count two, he faces a prison term of not more than 20 years plus fines.

His sentencing date is Oct. 2 at the federal courthouse in East St. Louis. Daniels has been detained since his arraignment on the charges on Feb. 20.

Facts revealed in court showed that the charges arose after an undercover internet investigation by the FBI’s Springfield Child Exploitation Task Force downloaded approximately 14 images of child porn between Feb. 9, and Aug 5, 2014, from a computer in Illinois that was offering the images to share. An investigation traced the computer to the Daniels residence in Columbia.

A federal search warrant executed at his home on Oct. 17, 2014, produced an eMachines desktop computer, an Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer and SanDisk thumb drive. A forensic examination of these devices revealed that these devices contained images and videos of child porn, many of which involved prepubescent minors or minors who had not attained 12 years of age. The exam also revealed that Daniels downloaded and received two images of child porn, one of a prepubescent male engaged in sexual intercourse with an adult female and the other of a prepubescent female in the display of her genitals.

During a search of his home, Daniels provided a voluntary statement to police in which he admitted using peer-to-peer programs to download and view child porn and provided the name of the current program he was using. Daniels said he had used the program as recently as Oct. 13, 2014, to obtain child pornography.

He said he would view the child porn “once or twice” and then delete it. Daniels told agents he gravitated toward image and video files of children between the ages of 10 and 17 and that he used search terms commonly associated with child porn in order to find such images.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. The case was investigated by the Columbia Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Springfield Child Exploitation Task Force. The case is assigned to Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Scott.