A Menasha man was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison after investigators found over 12,500 files of child sexual abuse material in his home.
Todd Grimm, 57, pleaded guilty Oct. 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to one count of receiving child pornography. Two additional counts of the same charge were dismissed through a plea agreement.
When investigators executed a search warrant at Grimm’s home in May 2025, they found a flash drive containing over 12,500 images of child sexual abuse material and stories Grimm had written “involving the sexual abuse of children by a male adult,” according to Grimm’s plea agreement.
The images were “horrific,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Humble said at Grimm’s Jan. 29 sentencing. The high volume of images, a majority of which Humble said depicted toddlers and infants, made the case “a much more serious receipt of child pornography case than most that we see,” he said.
The federal case is Grimm’s first conviction, Humble said, which would usually mean the prosecution would seek the mandatory minimum sentence of five years. However, the nature and volume of the images in Grimm’s case calls for much higher than the minimum, Humble said.
Humble and Federal Public Defender Krista Halla-Valdes reached a resolution that included a joint recommendation of a 7½-year prison sentence. Grimm’s plea agreement specified that recommendation under a federal statute that requires the judge to follow the agreed upon sentence if the court accepts the plea.
U.S. District Court Judge William Griesbach said he thought 7½ years was an appropriate sentence.
Charges were originally filed against Grimm in Winnebago County, but were dismissed after the case was moved to the federal level. Grimm spent seven months in custody on the state case before it was dismissed, Halla-Valdes said.
Griesbach ultimately sentenced Grimm to six years and 11 months in prison to reflect the seven months of credit he earned on the state case. Griesbach also ordered that Grimm be on supervised release for 15 years after his prison sentence.
Federal sentence will run concurrently to state child enticement sentence
After the state child pornography charges were filed against Grimm in May 2025, two relatives of Grimm’s told Waupaca County sheriff’s deputies that they had been sexually abused by Grimm in the past, according to a criminal complaint. One incident occurred in 2002 and the other between 1979 and 1982, the complaint said.
Grimm was charged with two counts of first-degree child sexual assault, two counts of incest, one count of child enticement-sexual contact and one count of enticing a child for immoral purposes in connection to the allegations. He pleaded no contest Nov. 6 to the two enticement charges.
On Dec. 23, Waupaca County Circuit Court Judge Vicki Clussman sentenced Grimm to a total of eight years in prison followed by three years on extended supervision.
At the joint recommendation of Humble and Halla-Valdes, Griesbach ordered Grimm’s federal sentence to run concurrently with his state sentence.
Vivian Barrett is the public safety reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach her at vmbarrett@usatodayco.com or (920) 431-8314.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Menasha man sentenced for possessing over 12,500 child pornography images
Reporting by Vivian Barrett, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Appleton Post-Crescent
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