Baumbach sentenced in District Court

BEAVER CITY - A McCook man was sentenced in Furnas County District Court Wednesday morning for charges he was convicted of in November relating to a sex trafficking investigation in Furnas County. 

Joseph H. Baumbach, 60, of McCook was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of probation for a misdemeanor charge of Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor. He was also sentenced to an additional 90 days in jail for a felony charge of tampering with physical evidence. Finally, he was also ordered to complete 200 hours of community service for the felony conviction.

The 30-day sentence was to begin by March 3 and the second sentence of 90 additional days in jail is to be served at the end of the probation period, scheduled for November 2023, according to court records. He received no credit for time served.

In November, the Furnas County Attorney and the Nebraska State Attorney General’s Office reached a plea agreement with Baumbach, who had been charged with a pair of counts related to Child Pornography in connection with the ongoing sex trafficking investigation.

In the November agreement, Baumbach pleaded no contest to a count of Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor, a Class 1 Misdemeanor, and charges of Child Pornography were dismissed.

Baumbach was also found guilty of a count of Tampering with Physical Evidence, a Class IV Felony, at what prosecutors called a stipulated bench trial in Lexington before Judge James Doyle IV.

Both parties stipulated to facts for the trial, which included that, in January 2020, Baumbach was in possession of a digital video file stored on his personal cell phone that depicted a partially nude minor female, who he believed at the time to be an adult. When he became aware of a criminal investigation related to the person depicted in the video, he deleted and destroyed the video.