G Raymond 
SAN FRANCISCO — Shortly before he was sentenced to two years in federal prison, a Bay Area man admitted to downloading thousands of pictures and videos containing child pornography from the Dark Web, but insisted he’s not attracted to young children.
Though he acknowledged that a child pornography market “doesn’t exist if not for people like me,” Eugene Jung, 49, called his crime a “thrill-seeking endeavor” and “one continuing drunken mistake” that he said he regrets each day. Jung made these tearful statements at his Monday afternoon sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.
“This is the very opposite of who I am. It doesn’t reflect my character,” Jung said. He later added: “I think about the victims daily. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed.”
Chhabria sentenced Jung to 32 months in federal prison, remarking that Jung’s crimes “seemed more deliberate” than many federally-charged child porn defendants.
Jung pleaded guilty to a federal child porn charge in late December 2019, related to files he downloaded from the Dark Web and paid for with Bitcoin, authorities say. They included images of kids “including prepubescent children and in at least one instance a baby — being sexually abused, humiliated, and degraded,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
Jung’s pretrial release conditions were strengthened when it was discovered that he kept score during a youth basketball game earlier this year, but he wasn’t remanded into custody, according to court records. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mohit Gourisaria noted that incident and argued for an 87-month term.
“Jung’s staggering amount of child pornography has real-world victims; it records the sexual exploitation and rape of real children,” Gourisaria wrote in a sentencing memo. “The industry that creates this material depends on the voracious appetite of those like Jung who will pay money to see images and videos of children being sexually abused.”
Jung’s attorney, Douglas Horngrad said all of the downloads occurred after Jung learned his identity had been stolen and was being sold on the Dark Web; he went to the sub-region of the Internet sometimes used for criminal activity to try and find his information, Horngrad said. He lauded Jung for doing volunteer work during his time on pretrial release and said Jung’s family would suffer if he was sent to prison for a lengthy term.
“He doesn’t pose a threat to anyone,” Horngrad said.
Jung was one of 337 people arrested in the 2019 federal takedown of a Dark Web site that the U.S. Department of Justice described in a news release as the “largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content” in the world.
