COLUMBIA, SC — A 21-year-old Eastover man was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in Columbia on Wednesday for making a bomb threat and possessing child pornography.

Sidney Myers had pleaded guilty last August to the two charges. The bomb threat involved making two phone calls to Eau Claire High School on the morning of Nov. 2, 2011.

Later, when FBI agents, using technology, traced the phone calls to Myers’ cell phone, they confiscated the phone and found six short videos of him having consensual sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend, who, while she is old enough to consent to sex in South Carolina, is considered a minor under federal law.

Myers didn’t send his sex videos to anyone, and his girlfriend knew he was making the video. But the fact that Myers’s cell phone contained videos depicting a legal minor having sex made it a federal crime, prosecutors said. Cell phones are manufactured outside of South Carolina and are deemed to be a part of interstate commerce, which brought the case into federal court.

Myers was given two 18-month sentences, to be served concurrently, by U.S. Judge Joseph Anderson.

Anderson said he would try to have Myers assigned to one of South Carolina’s four federal prisons.

Reach Monk at (803) 771-8344.