Bethany Man Sentenced to Federal Prison for Child Porn Charges

(Chattanooga, TN)  A Bethany man convicted of transporting child pornography has been sentenced to federal prison by a Tennessee court.

Ethan Matthew Lamberson (now 24 years old) was arrested in August, 2020 in Bethany for statutory sodomy.  He was later indicted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee for transportation of child pornography.

In February, 2021, Lamberson entered into a Plea Agreement wherein he agreed to enter a plea of guilty to transporting child pornography.  The government dismissed the remaining counts.

According to the court filings an FBI Online Covert Employee acting undercover joined a private chat room on the Kik application that was designed to openly trade child pornography.  The group primarily traded images and videos of male children under the age of 12 engaging in sexual activities with adult men.  

In April, 2020, Lamberson uploaded images of child pornography to the Kik group using the name “boyscout1012,” which was monitored by the FBI in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

After the agent identified the defendant as the person who had transported these images, the FBI served a search warrant at the defendant’s residence in Bethany, Missouri on August 14, 2020.  On this same day, an agent with the FBI interviewed the defendant.  The defendant estimated that law enforcement would find approximately 50 images or videos of child pornography on one of his devices.  

Lamberson admitted that he was involved in numerous Kik chat groups.  He also admitted that members of these groups commonly shared videos of underage boys who were approximately 8 to 12 years old, engaged in sexually explicit activity.  The defendant admitted that he shared either a sexually explicit image of a child or a video of a child in order to be added to the Kik group.  

On Friday, Lamberson was sentenced by the District Court in Chattanooga, Tennessee to 75 months in federal prison followed by 10 years of supervised release.  Under Federal Guidelines, Lamberson will serve at least 85% of his sentence before being placed on supervised release.  Lamberson was also ordered to comply with sex offender registration and notification.  Lamberson faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and up to life of supervised release.

A warrant was issued for Lamberson on Charges of Statutory Sodomy in Harrison County, Missouri.

Lamberson has been held in Federal custody since the indictment.  He will be transported to the Bureau of Prisons to serve his term of imprisonment.  

In a connected case, Bethany resident Rana L. Lamberson was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child in the second degree in December, 2020.  Rana Lamberson pleaded guilty to allowing Ethan Lamberson to have unsupervised contact with a child less than 17 years of age, being aware of inappropriate sexual contact.  She was sentenced by the Harrison County, Missouri court to 180 days in jail, with 160 days suspended, and two years probation.