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Iowa Man Who Faked His Own Death To Evade Child Porn Charges Sentenced To 20 Years
Jacob Chance Greer was awaiting trial for his child porn case before removing his ankle monitor and fleeing the state with a backpack full of survival gear. It took six years for authorities to catch him.
An Iowa man who faked his own suicide to avoid facing child porn charges will spend decades behind bars.
Jacob Chance Greer, 27, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for knowingly receiving child pornography, as announced Monday by the Department of Justice. Greer, of Des Moines, was out on bond awaiting trial for the same charges in 2016 before fleeing Iowa for the Pacific Northwest and spending six years on the run.
He was captured in Washington State — nearly 2,000 miles from his home — in April of last year, after living for years “off the grid,” according to investigators.
“Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our law enforcement partners, including the United States Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force, sex offender Jacob Greer failed in his attempt to avoid accountability for these serious charges involving the exploitation of children,” said U.S. Attorney Richard D. Westphal for the Southern District of Iowa.
Greer came onto the radar after Homeland Security Investigations and regional police in Ontario, Canada formed a joint task force in 2014 called “Project Hydra,” according to the Department of Justice.
They aimed to find people who produced and distributed child pornography online, eventually leading them to Greer. Feds say that on Feb. 4, 2015, they found child pornography on “numerous electronic devices” at his grandmother’s home, where Greer lived.
“According to court documents, Greer received, possessed, and distributed child pornography on the Internet over several years,” according to federal prosecutors.
Prosecutors say he also tried to delete the evidence in several ways, including “storing his collection on internet platforms instead of on his own electronic devices” and deleting files.
Greer was arrested by immigration officers for the child porn charges in April 2016 and bonded out, though ordered to wear an ankle monitor until he could go to trial, according to the Des Moines Register. However, about one month later, the ankle monitor was removed, and Greer was in the wind, equipped with a backpack full of survival gear, cash, and a bow and arrow.
Investigators located Greer’s abandoned truck parked near a lake in Dallas County, Iowa, according to federal prosecutors, and while the absconder was nowhere to be found, a suicide note was left.
The contents of the letter were not made public.
Still, police didn’t buy into the suicide theory so easily, and in June 2016, they recovered another vehicle linked to Greer at a campground in Montana, according to the Register.
Feds would later learn Greer spent most of his time around campgrounds and homeless shelters in the northwest and just across the Canadian border until an anonymous tip led to his April 4, 2022 arrest in Spanaway, just south of Tacoma.
“He tried to fly under the radar and did a pretty darn good job of doing it,” Mike Powell, a supervising deputy for the U.S. Marshals’ Southern Iowa Fugitive Task Force, previously told Oxygen.com. “Luck was on his side for a while, but eventually it will catch up to you, and I think that’s what happened in his case. Suffice to say, he was successful in evading arrest for almost six years.”
On top of the 20-year sentence, Greer is ordered to pay $12,000 restitution to the victims featured in the material he possessed, according to the Department of Justice. He must also register as a sex offender and be subject to five years supervision following his release from prison.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the U.S. Forest Service, and others also assisted in the investigation.
