Last Updated on April 3, 2026 11:09 am
A Candler man has been sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison for distributing thousands of files containing child sexual abuse material through a peer-to-peer network, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina.
Jake Ben Paul Lohr, 48, was sentenced to 126 months in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release. He will be required to register as a sex offender in any state or jurisdiction where he works or resides.
The Boone Police Department was among the agencies credited with investigating the case, along with Homeland Security Investigations and the Waynesville Police Department.
According to federal court documents, detectives conducting an online investigation on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network identified Lohr as sharing child sexual abuse material. Between December 2023 and January 2024, law enforcement completed three downloads of files containing thousands of images and videos that Lohr was making available for others to download.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant at Lohr's residence on February 28, 2024. Multiple electronic devices were seized and forensically analyzed. The analysis revealed that Lohr possessed the equivalent of 571,950 images depicting the sexual abuse of children as young as infants. Some of the material also portrayed sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence.
“Each time an image depicting the sexual abuse of a child is shared, that child is revictimized all over again,” said U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson. “For those who continue to distribute thousands of files like Lohr, we have no choice but to remove them from the community to stop them from causing further harm to victims who have already suffered too much.”
Lohr remains in federal custody and will be transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexis Benjamin of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Asheville as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
