Zimmerman Man Convicted Of Distributing Child Pornography

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A 40-year-old Zimmerman man was convicted Wednesday in U.S. District Court for distribution of child pornography out of his Sherburne County home.

Levi Wayne Burns was indicted in the case on Nov. 20, 104, with one count of possession and one count of distribution of child pornography. He pleaded guilty on June 5 to possession of child pornography in the same case.

He had previously been convicted in 2005 in Sherburne County for third-degree criminal sexual conduct for engaging in sexual acts with a 15-year-old girl.

According to the plea agreement and conviction at trial, Burns shared several files electronically that contained images and videos of child pornography in January of 2014. It included two female children between 10 and 14 years old engaged in sexual acts.

Burns lived in the basement of his parents' home in Sherburne County and operated several computers and related equipment. He was using so much computer power that they used the heat generated by the computers to heat the home that winter, which was one of the coldest in recent history.

According to court documents, he was operating a specially built computer with several hard drives and at least one of them was being used store and share child pornography over the Internet. Burns also saved thousands of files of child pornography on a separate external hard drive.

A sentencing date for Burns has not yet been set.