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Press Release

Abingdon Man Sentenced To 30 Months In Prison For Possessing Child Pornography

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Maryland

Baltimore, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Nicholas Paul Pedone, age 41, of Abingdon, Maryland, today to 30 months in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release for possessing child pornography. Judge Bennett ordered that upon his release from prison, Pedone must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to his plea agreement, in March 2013 an agent in the Violent Crimes Against Children Section of the FBI was reviewing the email account of a user that contained child pornography and saw that this user had been corresponding with Pedone by email. One of the user’s emails to Pedone contained two images depicting naked prepubescent and early pubescent males and females.

On October 18, 2013, the agent executed a search warrant on Pedone’s email account which revealed that Pedone had sent and received thousands of emails containing depictions of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and that the emails and image files were saved in Pedone’s email account. These emails were sent and received between Pedone and dozens of other email accounts.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.  For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.justice.gov/psc and click on the "resources" tab on the left of the page.             

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI for its work in the investigation and thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul E. Budlow, who prosecuted the case.

Updated February 23, 2015

Topic
Project Safe Childhood