On Thursday, April 12, 2018, William “Bill” Pulse, age 55, of Miles City was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison on a Possession of Child Pornography charge, to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. Judge Susan Watters issued the sentence in U.S. District Court in Billings. William Pulse must also register as a sex offender.
A plea deal filed in November revealed that a second charge of distributing child pornography was scheduled to be dropped at the sentencing hearing Thursday.
The investigation into William Pulse started in September 2015 when Dropbox sent a Cybertip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The Cybertip indicated that Dropbox detected images of child pornography in one of their Dropbox accounts and the IP address uploading the images was located in Miles City. The Cybertip was then fowarded to Captain Mark Reddick of the Miles City Police Department for further investigation. Captain Reddick is a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC). Search warrants were obtained for the Dropbox account and the IP address associated with the Dropbox account. The IP address was then traced back to William Pulse’s residence in Miles City. Law enforcement then discovered that William Pulse has used his IP address to upload 653 images of child pornography to his Dropbox account.
