Albany man sentenced to 14 years in prison

CONCORD — Albany resident Brian Hargraves, 55, was sentenced today in federal court to 14 years  in prison for possessing child sexual abuse materials and for obstructing justice, U.S. Attorney Erin Creegan announces. United States District Judge Landya McCafferty also sentenced Hargraves to 10 years of supervised release following his prison term.

Hargraves pleaded guilty in May to posing as a teenage boy online in order to obtain CSAM from minors. On April 29, 2025, law enforcement seized and searched Hargraves’ mobile phones following an investigation into his online communications with minors. A review of one of the phones revealed sexually explicit images and videos of a teenage minor victim. Hargraves told the minor victim that he was a teenage boy and asked her to create explicit videos and images of herself to send to him. The evidence revealed that Hargraves was also engaging in sexually explicit communications with other minors and was posing as a teenager in those communications as well. After his devices were seized and his home searched by the FBI, the defendant obstructed justice by contacting a minor victim and attempting to persuade her not to speak to law enforcement.