Brandon Cole Stoliby

Introduction

Brandon Cole Stoliby, a 33-year-old Indiana man, was sentenced on November 3, 2026, to fifteen years in federal prison followed by ten years of supervised release for traveling to Montana to pick up a fifteen-year-old girl he had groomed on Snapchat, sexually abusing her during the trip, and trying — twice — to take her home to Indiana. What separates Stoliby’s case from an ordinary online-grooming prosecution is the point at which he learned the truth: law enforcement removed the girl from his custody and told him directly that she was fifteen, and he attempted the transport again anyway. He pleaded guilty in July 2026 before U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy.

Background Information

Stoliby met the Montana girl over Snapchat in March 2025. She presented herself as eighteen, and he quickly showed sexual interest — sending her explicit messages and persuading her to send explicit images of herself, photographs that would later be found on his phone when he was arrested in Montana. By April 2025, the two had made plans for Stoliby to travel to Montana, pick her up, and move her back to his home in Indiana. The plans had a transactional component that court documents lay out plainly: the girl would sell explicit images of herself to help cover the costs of the trip and the move. He made the trip with his wife and children in tow.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Stoliby pleaded guilty in July 2026 to traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and to transportation of child pornography, and he was sentenced on November 3, 2026; the convictions and the sentence are adjudicated facts.

Stoliby arrived in Missoula County on April 6, 2025, and picked the girl up from her home. On the return trip, while the two were still in Montana, they engaged in sexual intercourse. Law enforcement then removed the girl from Stoliby’s custody and told him she was fifteen years old. Despite that knowledge, he tried again to transport her to Indiana, and he retained child sexual abuse material depicting her. The case against him was built in part on his own admissions: in interviews with law enforcement after his arrest, Stoliby admitted exchanging sexually explicit images with the girl, engaging in a sexual relationship with her, and keeping the explicit photos she had sent him.

U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy presided over the case and imposed the fifteen-year prison term and ten years of supervised release. The two counts — traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and transportation of child pornography — cover both halves of the conduct: the trip itself, made for the purpose of sexual contact with a minor, and the images of her that crossed state lines on his phone. The government’s court filings also document the plan for the girl to finance her own transport by selling explicit images, a detail that places the conduct within the exploitation patterns federal prosecutors treat as trafficking-adjacent.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Brian Lowney and investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department. It was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, the Justice Department’s nationwide initiative against the sexual exploitation of children. The consequences for Stoliby are a fifteen-year federal sentence — imposed roughly eighteen months after the April 2025 trip — followed by a decade of supervised release, with the convictions standing as a permanent record of the Montana pickup and the images he kept.

Current Status

Stoliby is sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison with ten years of supervised release to follow. The sentence was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana on November 3, 2026, closing the guilty-plea phase of the case; he pleaded guilty in July 2026 and the court imposed the term at sentencing. No appeal or post-sentence motion is reported in the announcement.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Stoliby was 33 at sentencing and will be in his late forties when he completes the fifteen-year term, after which the ten-year supervised-release term keeps him under federal supervision into his late fifties. The conviction record — traveling for illicit sexual conduct with a minor plus transportation of child pornography — carries sex-offense registration consequences and marks every subsequent interaction he has with the justice system. The fact that he persisted in the transport plan after being told the girl’s age is the detail the court had before it, and it forecloses any argument that the crime was a good-faith mistake.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Montana, “Indiana man sentenced to 15 years in prison for sex trafficking underage Montana girl,” November 3, 2026. source