BOSTON — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - Massachusetts), published as received.
BOSTON – A Cromwell, Conn. man was sentenced on Friday, May 1, 2015, to child exploitation charges in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Conn.
Samuel DiProto, 63, was sentenced to 84 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer. DiProto pleaded guilty in September 2014 to receiving child pornography.
From 2009 through March 2013, DiProto downloaded child pornography from a file sharing network. A law enforcement official discovered DiProto’s child pornography after logging into the publicly available file sharing network and discovered downloaded images and videos of child pornography from a computer that was traced to DiProto.
United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz; Patricia M. Ferrick, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New Haven Division; and Connecticut State Police Colonel Brian F. Meraviglia, made the announcement today.
This matter was investigated by the Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes Unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Connecticut Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Regan, Chief of Ortiz’s Springfield Branch Unit and Assistant U.S. Attorney Neeraj N. Patel in the District of Connecticut. The case was prosecuted under the auspices of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Massachusetts to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest because the defendant has a familial relationship with federal law enforcement in the District of Connecticut.
The case is brought as part of Project Safe Childhood. In 2006, the Department of Justice created Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from exploitation and abuse. Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children, as well as identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov/.
