Man Sentenced to Two Years for Possessing Child Pornography

ROCHESTER, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced that Joseph Martin,53, of Hilton, New York, was sentenced to 24 months in prison, a $500 fine, and 10 years of supervised release by United States District Judge David. G. Larimer after pleading guilty to knowingly possessing child pornography.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany H. Lee, who handled the case, stated that in January 2009, Martin's employer had received a complaint that one of its employees was allegedly using a work computer to access pornography. On that same day, a maintenance worker found compact disks while dumping out the trash located at Martin's work space. Six of the disks recovered from Martin’s work space contained movies depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Martin admitted to knowingly possessing the disks that contained the child pornography.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

The sentence was the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the direction of Special Agent in Charge James Robertson.