BILLINGS — A former special agent for the State Department whose work included investigating child pornography cases has been sentenced to seven years in prison for possessing child pornography.
U.S. District Judge Susan Watters sentenced 49-year-old Shawn Thomas Conrad of Billings on Friday.
The case began when Billings police were investigating a report that Conrad tried to videotape a 12-year-old girl in the shower. Conrad was working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and his employer seized an agency vehicle. He left a hard drive in the vehicle and asked several times for it to be returned.
The Billings Gazette reports investigators recovered images of child pornography from the hard drive and a laptop even though Conrad had installed data wiping programs on both.
Conrad asked for supervised release, saying he’d already lost his job and retirement benefits.