CEDAR RAPIDS – A man who received child pornography was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

John Thomas Carstensen, age 50, of Gladbrook received the prison term after a Nov. 12, 2024 guilty plea to one count of receipt of child pornography.

In a plea agreement, Carstensen admitted that, between Aug. 2021 and Aug. 2022, he knowingly received depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Carstensen has a prior felony conviction from 1993 for sexual exploitation of a minor.

Carstensen was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams. Carstensen was sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment. He was ordered to make $27,000 in restitution to the victims in the case. He must also serve a five-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

This case was brought as 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 the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”

Carstensen is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Adam J. Vander Stoep and was investigated by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Task Force.