H.B. man gets 11-year prison term for trying to produce child porn

A commercial firefighter who lives in Huntington Beach was sentenced Friday to 11 years and three months in federal prison for trying to produce child pornography by sending money abroad to someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl, according to prosecutors.

John McArthur, 57, pleaded guilty in May to one felony count of attempting to produce child pornography, federal prosecutors said. He is a state-licensed firefighter who was employed at a Southern California refinery.

McArthur had online conversations in January 2012 with someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl in the Philippines, authorities said. At one point, McArthur agreed to send her money so she could buy a camera to take sexually explicit pictures of herself and a supposed 11-year-old friend, prosecutors said.

In reality, the girl was 75-year-old Robert Oliver Clark, according to authorities.

Clark is a U.S. citizen who was living in the Philippines where he amassed a collection of thousands of pictures and dozens of videos depicting child pornography, prosecutors said.

In a related case, Clark was arrested in 2014 and now is serving a 97-month sentence in federal prison, according to prosecutors.

During their investigation of the two men, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service also discovered McArthur had used various email addresses to receive hundreds of images and several videos of child pornography.

“This defendant’s deviant crime sought to prey on the most vulnerable victims in society – children,” U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker said in a prepared statement. “As demonstrated by the sentence that will send Mr. McArthur to prison for well over a decade, there are lengthy prison sentences associated with child pornography crimes like this defendant’s, and these penalties are designed to punish offenders and serve as a warning to others who might consider producing, trafficking or possessing child pornography.”