A Denton man was sentenced to more than 14 years in federal prison for child exploitation crimes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas announced.
Trinity Snow Cassells, also known as Dustin Joseph McDuffie, 34, pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography and received a 170-month sentence.
Prosecutors said Cassells was the subject of 10 CyberTips between 2018 and 2024. He used multiple social media platforms, cloud storage and email accounts — as well as the dark web — to trade child pornography.
According to court records, Cassells also communicated with individuals he believed to be minors on platforms commonly used by children, grooming them to engage in illegal sexual conduct and encouraging them to abuse other children. He distributed child pornography to them as part of that conduct, authorities said.
This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
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