A Wright County man has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for producing child pornography that victimized two children and distributing the images to others.

Nicholas S. Campbell, 37, of Otsego, was sentenced last week in federal court in St. Paul after a guilty plea.

"The sexual exploitation of children is a despicable and vile crime," U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald said in a statement. "This defendant, who preyed on and exploited vulnerable children for years, will now be held accountable for his actions, locked away in prison for decades."

Along with a prison term, Campbell's sentence includes another 25 years of supervised release.

According to the defendant's guilty plea and court documents:

FBI agents seized from Campbell's home a large volume of electronic evidence showing that he had produced sexually explicit images and videos of the two children. The plea agreement reached in April pointed out that some of the images involved "sadistic and masochistic conduct."

He then used a peer-to-peer file-sharing platform to digitally distribute the images.

The depictions date back at least seven years, when one of the children was younger than 12.

Paul Walsh