A Peoria man, Michael Dean Dupoy, 53, has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography. U.S. District Judge Jonathan E. Hawley issued the sentence on August 20, 2025, which will be followed by a lifetime term of supervised release. In addition to this sentence, Dupoy received an extra two years in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release from a previous conviction. The two sentences will run consecutively, totaling 240 months.
Dupoy had previously been convicted in 2008 for receipt of child pornography and was sentenced to over 18 years in prison with a lifetime of supervised release. He began his supervised release in October 2024. Later that month, during a visit to his residence, a United States Probation Officer found a SanDisk Model 512GB Micro SD card. Although Dupoy claimed it only contained movies, the officer seized the card for analysis.
In December 2024, while waiting for the results of the SD card analysis, another home visit revealed that Dupoy possessed an unmonitored cellular phone—an item prohibited under his supervised release conditions. Investigators later found that both the SD card and phone contained hundreds of images and dozens of videos depicting child sexual abuse materials, as well as photos of children who visited the store where Dupoy worked.
Dupoy was arrested in December 2024 for violating his supervised release. A federal grand jury indicted him in February 2025 on new charges related to possession of child pornography. He pleaded guilty in April and has remained in custody since his arrest.
At sentencing, Judge Hawley stated that the punishment was necessary “to protect the public and deter Dupoy from further criminal conduct,” noting that Dupoy’s illegal activity resumed almost immediately after he left prison. The judge said there was “nothing to think [that Dupoy] would not immediately engage in this behavior again” and described incarceration as “the surest way to deter” future offenses by Dupoy. Judge Hawley concluded that Dupoy needed “to be removed from society to protect the public.”
Because of his prior conviction, federal law required a minimum sentence of ten years and allowed up to twenty years’ imprisonment for possession of child pornography.
The investigation involved the United States Probation Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Springfield Field Office. Criminal Chief Darilynn J. Knauss prosecuted the case.
This prosecution is part of Project Safe Childhood, an initiative led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) designed to combat child sexual exploitation through coordination among federal, state, and local agencies nationwide. More information about Project Safe Childhood can be found at www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
