A man has been sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in prison for advertising and distributing child sex abuse material on the dark web. Court documents say 36-year-old Austen Peppers or Lawton, Oklahoma sold and offered to sell images of minors being sexually abused. He allegedly conducted transactions on the dark web using cryptocurrency and used platforms and applications he believed would protect him from law enforcement scrutiny.

Peppers was also involved in sexually explicit communications with people he believed to be minors and encouraged the apparent minors to create sexually explicit images of themselves. Court documents say Peppers had thousands of images and videos of children being sexually abused. Austen Peppers has been sentenced to 21 years and 10 months. He is also ordered to pay a special assessment of $11,200 and restitution totaling $57,000 to his victims.