A Louisiana man who served time for child pornography production is again facing federal child pornography charges.
Robert Randall Reinhart was indicted by a federal grand jury this week, accused of six counts receipt of child pornography. The alleged offenses occurred in 2022 and 2023, the indictment alleges.
A warrant was issued for his arrest; court records indicate he was last known to be living in Shreveport.
But he was living in Scott, with a Boy Scout leader named Matthew Carroll, back in 1998 when he and his roommate were accused of molesting boys and filming it, then distributing that child pornography.
They both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to use, persuade and induce children to engage in sexual conduct in order to produce pornography for distribution. They each were sentenced to 19 years and seven months in prison.
In their shared mobile home, investigators found camera equipment, including cameras hidden in Carroll’s bedroom. They recovered nearly 2,000 pieces of child pornography, including videos of Carroll with young boys, and boys in various states of bondage, investigators said at the time.
Carroll and Reinhart were both charged in state district court with multiple counts. Both Carroll and Reinhart pleaded guilty to state charges of indecent behavior with a juvenile and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile and both were sentenced to nine years in prison, which sentences were to run at the same time as their federal sentences.
The federal case record indicates numerous appeals and re-sentencings for Reinhart. It also records that he completed a 29-month sex offender program while in prison. When his release was imminent in 2015, he objected to some proposed conditions of it - including a ban on internet access - but the prosecutors presented evidence that he had hidden a cell phone while at his halfway house and swallowed the sim card when the supervisor tried to see what he'd been doing with it. He also tried repeatedly to get assigned to a youth ministry at a nearby Mormon church he was attending, testimony revealed.
The judge upheld most of the conditions on his internet use, saying he based that decision on the original crime, which was "heinous."
The federal court record also indicates that Reinhart "demanded" that his "property" be returned to him after the guilty plea, but the FBI told him it was contraband and they couldn't do that without a court order. The judge did allow the FBI to return anything that wasn't contraband.
