Former Minn. Teacher Sentenced For Child Porn Chat Room Posts

A Minnesota man was sentenced to five years in federal prison for distributing child pornography through online chat rooms. Joshua Noble, 39, also was sentenced to a 10-year term of supervised release, and ordered to pay $26,000 in restitution to the victims and a $5,000 special assessment to the Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund.

Noble was a substitute teacher in Fergus Falls for about 15 years, according to Noble’s guilty plea and court documents. On March 4, 2016, undercover police officers watched Noble use an anonymous online messaging service to obtain and distribute images depicting the sexual abuse of children.

Noble possessed at least 244 such images, including depictions of prepubescent children under 12 years of age, as well as infants and toddlers, according to authorities. He was charged April 17, 2017, and pleaded guilty on June 29.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Miranda Dugi prosecuted the case. The investigation was conducted under Homeland Security Investigations’ Operation Predator, an international initiative to protect children from sexual predators.

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