Former West Plains school employee sentenced to 17 years for sexually exploiting children, child pornography

(From the U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri)

A former employee of the West Plains, Missouri, R-7 School District was sentenced in federal court today with soliciting children to send him sexually explicit photos and videos through Snapchat and Instagram.

Cody Ashton Ary, 31, of West Plains, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Beth Phillips to 17 years in federal prison without parole. The court also ordered Ary to pay $6,000 in restitution.

Ary was employed at the time of the offense with the West Plains R-7 School District as a paraprofessional who commonly assisted with special need students. He was a site director for the Boys and Girls Town Club.

Ary, who has been in federal custody since his arrest on May 20, 2020, pleaded guilty on March 23, 2021, to one count of the sexual exploitation of a child and one count of receiving and distributing child pornography.

According to court documents, Instagram initiated a CyberTip with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Dec. 3, 2019, after Ary uploaded a sexually explicit video of an 8-to-10-year-old boy to his account. Investigators found a total of 92 chat conversations between Ary and other Instagram users. Ary used the screen name “15anime_boy” and identified himself as a 15-year-old male to other users. He solicited sexually explicit videos and images from other users who identified to be minor males. Ary received dozens of images and videos of child pornography through his Instagram account. Ary asked the child victims to send him videos and images of them stripping in exchange for Ary providing Internet links to folders that contained child pornography.

An FBI task force officer in Buffalo, New York, was investigating a separate case in October 2019 in which Ary used a different Snapchat account to solicit and receive child pornography from other users reporting to be minors.

Law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at Ary’s residence on May 20, 2020, where he was arrested. Ary admitted to investigators that he searched for minor males on Instagram and asked them for videos and images of themselves nude. Ary stated he would receive images and videos from the users, which depicted minor males engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Ary also admitted that he also used Snapchat, chat-avenue, and other internet mediums to distribute links to child pornography folders and to contact minor males. Investigators found images of child pornography on Ary’s cell phone.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ami Harshad Miller. It was investigated by the West Plains, Mo., Police Department, the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crime Task Force, and Homeland Security Investigations.