Child porn, meth charges bring federal prison time for Coulee Region residents

A La Crosse man will serve 12-and-a-half years in prison for possessing child porn.

Jeremy Hogenkamp was sentenced Thursday by a federal judge in Madison, after pleading guilty to the porn charge back in March.

Government agents acted on a tip about images uploaded into a Google Cloud account and searched Hogenkamp’s home and office last fall. They found a laptop and flip phones containing thousands of pornographic images of children.

Hogenkamp told authorities they would find “bad stuff with kids” on his laptop.

This is Hogenkamp’s second federal conviction on child porn charges. He was on supervision for a 2011 conviction when the new offense occurred.

Another federal court case has led to a 10-year prison sentence for a Prairie du Chien man convicted of possessing meth.

Christopher Fernette also has been ordered to forfeit $17,000, which was in his possession when he was arrested last year in Crawford County.

Fernette got into a fight with a Crawford County sheriff’s deputy in April of 2021, after the deputy tried to question him about drugs outside a bar in Ferryville.

He reportedly had tossed a bag containing three pounds of meth into a ditch. The $17,000 in cash was discovered inside Fernette’s car.