A former Dallas Center man was sentenced last week to 17 years in prison on child pornography charges.

United States District Court Chief Judge James E. Gritzner sentenced 36 year-old Benjaman Shelabarger on Friday, February 21st after being charged last March with one count of illegally possessing child pornography and then he was additionally charged with knowingly receiving child pornography.

A jury found Shelabarger guilty on both charges in November of 2013, but the case was opened back up when it was discovered that the 36 year-old falsely testified during his trial that a relative was responsible instead of the defendant which the judge found to be obstruction of justice.  Shelabarger also had movies and images of children being sexually assaulted, used a computer and had a large number of child pornography movies and images.

On Friday, he was sentenced to 210 months (or 17 ½ years) in prison with five years of supervised release following his imprisonment.

The investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations, Cyber Crime Unit, and the Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force.

The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.