Ex-CHP officer found with thousands of child porn videos and photos sentenced in Sacramento

A former California Highway Patrol officer arrested after authorities found thousands of child pornography images on his cellphone and laptop — and who after his arrest accessed the web for sexual chats — was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years and a month in prison.

Timothy Allen Horwath, 53, of Rancho Cordova spent nearly 17 years as a CHP officer before an undercover operation in Redding led authorities to discover a laptop inside his CHP duty bag in his garage containing “depictions of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” court records say.

“Some of the files on the computer depicted extremely young children (as young as three and four years old) being forcibly raped and sexually abused by adult males,” court records say. “Investigators also found a cellphone on Horwath’s person, which contained thousands of visual depictions of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”

U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez sentenced Horwath in a Sacramento courtroom to the prison term and to another 10 years of supervised release, rejecting a plea from his lawyer for a five-year sentence.

“Your honor, what I did was wrong,” Horwath told the federal judge before sentencing. “I realize that.

“The things that I did I was only thinking about myself. I wasn’t thinking about the victims. I feel tremendously horrible about what my actions have been. I do realize I have a problem. I do want to seek any kind of help I can get.”

Horwath’s attorney David Dratman argued that as a former law enforcement officer and child pornographer, Horwath is going to have “many targets on his back.”

“He would be doing a different type of prison than anyone else,” Dratman told the judge, arguing that five years in custody followed by 15 years of supervised release was more than adequate for a defendant of his age with no criminal record.

“Ten years in prison is simply not necessary to punish him for his actions in this case,” Dratman argued. “He’s never been in custody before.”

Dratman also argued in court papers that Horwath was remorseful and that before his arrest he had been married to his second wife for 20 years and had five children from his marriages.

“As a result of his actions in this case, he has lost his marriage, lost contact with his children, and lost his career,” Dratman wrote, adding that Horwath had been abused by an elderly neighbor as a boy and was receiving mental health treatment.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina McCall noted that after Horwath’s 2019 arrest and release on bond, he violated the terms of his release by accessing the internet for sex chats.

“In this case, Horwath was downloading thousands of still images and videos constituting child pornography, and deliberately violated his bond conditions by using the internet, smartphones, and social media accounts,” McCall wrote in court documents.

Investigators learned in December 2022 that Horwath was accessing the internet, court records say, and surveillance teams following him saw him using a smartphone at a Walmart.

They also followed him and saw him “inside a Target store, in the electronics section, discussing topics with a Target employee such as: purchasing a SIM card and the price; prepaid phone service cards, their costs and data limit.”

“An agent heard (the) defendant ... giving his account number, providing his credit card payment information, and requesting to activate a phone,” court records say. “Agents heard a Target employee speaking with Consumer Cellular saying that defendant had brought a phone with him and was attempting to set it up and transfer account data.”

A search in February led investigators to find an iPhone in his pants pocket, a Wi-Fi router hidden under a blanket behind a couch and “dozens of archived WhatsApp encrypted messaging conversations.”

“Although most of the WhatsApp messages began with defendant asking, ‘Are you 18 years old?,’ many of these chats proceeded into a sexual nature, with the exchange of nude photos,” court records say. “It appeared these chats were with females located within the Philippines.

“One chat message talked about the transferring of money to PHP (potentially the Philippine Peso currency). A chat that talked about the money accompanied a message from Horwath saying, in part, ‘I am your boyfriend now and I should take care of you.’”

Horwath subsequently pleaded guilty in April to receipt of child pornography, and his attorney asked Mendez on Tuesday to recommend placement in a prison in Colorado or Ohio that has a sex offender management program.