Defendant Allegedly Admitted He Has Been Collecting Sex Abuse Images For A Decade; Faces Up To Seven Years In Prison If Convicted

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown today announced that a 56-year-old Queens man has been charged with sharing and possessing hundreds of files of child sex abuse material he collected online – accumulating more than four terabytes of data.

The defendant is alleged to have been sharing videos depicting child sexual abuse on a peer-to-peer network between September and December of this year. The videos were of prepubescent girls as young as five years old being sexually abused.

District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant’s alleged collection of child sex abuse imagery is both revolting and disgusting and underscores the critical need for law enforcement’s internet surveillance initiative to protect children from pedophiles and predators. The defendant in this case, is alleged to have accumulated hundreds of thousands of videos and photos of youngsters – many who hadn’t even reached puberty yet – being sexually abused by adult men and women. The public should be aware that these images are, for all intents and purposes, crime scene photos and videos of real children that are being abused in the most heinous ways. These youngsters must live with the horror of their childhood for the rest of their lives.”

District Attorney Brown identified the defendant as John Porciello, 56, of 64 Street in the Middle Village neighborhood of Queens. The defendant was arraigned last night before Queens Criminal Court Judge Danielle L. Hartman on a criminal complaint charging him with 27 counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and 27 counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child.
Judge Hartman set bail at $75,000 bond or $35,000 cash and ordered the defendant to return to court on December 27, 2017. If convicted, Porciello faces up to seven years in prison.

District Attorney Brown said that, according to the charges, a New York City police officer conducting an online investigation on a peer-to-peer network monitored downloads of both videos and photos on September 14, 2017, and identified an IP address associated with a computer allegedly used by the defendant in his Middle Village, Queens, home. The officer was able to download three of the videos the defendant was allegedly sharing on the peer-to-peer network. The first video, showed a child approximately 11-years-old being instructed to undress and to touch herself. In the second video, a girl between 9 and 11 years old performs oral sex on an adult male and the third video clip shows a child about 5 years old being sexually abused by a woman.

On December 13, 2017, police executed a court-authorized search warrant on the defendant’s 64 Street apartment and a forensic preview of Porciello’s external hard drive allegedly found numerous other videos and images of children being abused. The defendant allegedly told police that he is familiar with the peer-to-peer network and that he had been collecting files for 10 years and that he had over 4 terabytes of images and videos. It is further alleged, that the defendant admitted to moving the child exploitation material onto the external hard drive and sorting the videos and stills by the children’s age and that he masturbates while watching the videos.

The investigation was conducted by Police Officer Thomas Barberio of the New York City Police Department’s Computer Crime Squad, under the supervision of Sergeant James Duke, Lieutenant Felix Rivera, Deputy Inspector Joseph Kersting and Deputy James Luongo of the Special Investigations Division.

Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Speck, of District Attorney Brown’s Organized Crimes and Rackets Bureau, is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Kateri A. Gasper, Chief of the District Attorney’s Computer Crimes Unit, Gerard A. Brave, Bureau Chief of the District Attorney’s Organized
Crime and Rackets Bureau, and Catherine C. Kane and Mary M. Lowenburg, Deputy Bureau Chiefs, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Peter A. Crusco.

It should be noted that a criminal complaint is merely an accusation and that a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.