Bemidji man sentenced for distributing child sexual abuse material online

A 47-year-old Bemidji man was sentenced to 21 years in prison on Tuesday. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Craig James Myran was sentenced to 262 months in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for his involvement with a site on the dark web that shows advertisements and distribution of images and videos of child sexual abuse and for possession of similar material in his apartment.

On Nov. 20, 2024, a federal jury convicted Craig James Myran. He was sentenced Tuesday, April 1 in U.S. District Court by Judge Eric C. Tostrud.

“The defendant’s crimes reflected disregard for the victims’ humanity. He treated society’s most vulnerable victims, young children, as sex objects and nothing more.” Judge Tostrud said at the sentencing. “Crimes were far from impulsive. He did not stumble onto the dark web by accident. He used it in an effort to conceal his activities, because he knew what he was doing was very wrong.” Judge Tostrud concluded that Myran’s “depraved mind” and his “refusal to accept any responsibility” for his crimes created a “serious need to protect the public.”

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Myran was an active participant on a site that was dedicated to discussing and trafficking in child sexual abuse material. Authorities say Myran used an account with a unique username to make over a thousand posts in which he shared images of child sexual abuse on the site over a number of years.

In at least one post, Myran requested specific files of known child sexual abuse material from other users, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota. And in another post, he advertised over 100 images depicting the sadomasochistic sexual abuse of two prepubescent minors.

On December 8, 2022, FBI special agents executed a search warrant on Myran’s apartment in Bemidji, where they found numerous hard drives and a cell phone. Forensic analysis of these devices uncovered evidence that Myran was the user of this unique account on the dark web site — including files of the child sexual abuse material that he shared and requested on the website, as well as a message directed to his unique alias, and thousands of other images of child sexual abuse material.

According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Myran’s sexual exploitation of minors was not limited to his activity on this particular dark-web site. He was simultaneously an active participant on multiple other dark-web sites dedicated to trafficking in child sexual abuse material and reported that he previously produced his own child sexual abuse material by screen-recording minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct during online webcam interactions.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the case was the result of an investigation by the FBI Minneapolis Field Office and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. It was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc