Published: October 09, 2009 09:23 am      

Former U of C student sentenced in porn case

Receives 12 years for child pornography possession, extortion and identity theft

By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

Former University of the Cumberlands student Sungkook Kim was sentenced Thursday to 12 years and one month in federal prison.

Kim, 24, had pleaded guilty to the first 24 counts of a 25-count indictment and was found guilty on April 16 of the 25th count charging him with possessing child pornography

The counts to which he pleaded guilty charged him with extortion, illegal hacking into the computers of others and a single count of identity theft.

U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove broke the sentence down to two years on the 15 extortion counts, five years on the eight hacking counts and ten years and a month on the child pornography charge, all of which will run concurrently. The identity theft charge netted two years in prison and, added to the other counts, makes a total of a dozen years and a month. Ten years of supervised release was also imposed.

His mother and sister were in the courtroom. His sister reportedly lives in the Louisville area and Van Tatenhove agreed to recommend that he be incarcerated near his sister’s home.

Kim, a native of the Philippines and apparently planning to be a medical student, was indicted in mid-December after reportedly using e-mail to threaten a student at U of C that he would send to others videos of her engaged in sexual activities if she did not make and send similar videos to him. Testimony in the trial revealed that the video he threatened to send to others was made when she was 16 years old and was considered child pornography.

The threatening e-mails persisted from Oct. 2 to Nov. 12. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and Williamsburg police investigated the incident. The investigation determined that Kim had installed keylogging software on school computers to capture other students’ usernames and passwords.

When Kim’s computer was seized, according to police, several thousand pornography was on its hard drive, but only four involving minors.

Prior to imposition of the sentence, Kim spoke to the court: “I want to apologize to the court for all my awful crimes. This is the greatest mistake I ever did in my life. I’ll never do it again. I’m sorry.”

“You are very sincerely trying to put this behind you,” said Van Tatenhove, who added, “My job is to hold you accountable for what you have done.”