Nurse from Virginia sentenced to seven years in prison for distribution of child pornography

WASHINGTON — A Virginia nurse will spend seven years behind bars for distributing child pornography. A judge handed down the sentence

Lucas Fussell, 43, was sentenced to seven years in prison and 10 years of probation. He was also ordered to pay $20,000 for distributing child sexual abuse material using a messaging app.

“The defendant, who occupied a position of trust as a nurse practitioner, used an end-to-end encrypted messaging application to disseminate images depicting the abuse of young children and bragged about the effectiveness of the measures that he used to evade law enforcement detection,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Fussell, from Onley, Va., used Session, a messaging app, to send and receive video