Former Family Practice Physician Sentenced to 51 Months in Prison for Trading Child Pornography

David B. Fein, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that Carl G. Koplin, 55, of Tolland, was sentenced today by Senior United States District Judge Alfred V. Covello in Hartford to 51 months of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release, for receiving and distributing child pornography. Koplin also was ordered to pay a fine of $10,000.

“This defendant’s appalling collection of child pornography was one of the largest that we have seen here in Connecticut,” stated U.S. Attorney Fein. “It’s reprehensible that a practicing physician who held such an important position of trust in the community victimized so many children by collecting and trading sexually explicit images of them. This office is committing to working with the FBI, Connecticut Child Exploitation Task Force, and our other law enforcement partners to protect children by stemming the distribution of these images and vigorously prosecuting offenders.”

According to court documents and statements made in court, a special agent with the Northern Virginia Resident Agency of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation used a publicly available Internet file sharing program to download approximately 300 images and videos of child pornography from the shared directories of a user with an Internet protocol (IP) address that was subsequently identified as belonging to a subscriber at Koplin’s residence in Tolland.

On July 9, 2010, federal agents searched Koplin’s home and seized a desktop computer, storage media, and other computer components. Koplin was arrested on that date after he admitted to agents that he used a file sharing program to trade images of child pornography and that he was responsible for any child pornography found as a result of the search of his residence.

Subsequent forensic analysis of the seized items revealed thousands of images and videos depicting child pornography, totaling more than 800 gigabytes in size.

Prior to his arrest, Koplin was employed as a family practice physician in Vernon.

Koplin has been in home confinement under electronic monitoring by the U.S. Probation office since the date of his arrest. On August 29, 2012, he pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography.

This matter was investigated by 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 United States Attorneys Ray Miller, Sarala Nagala, and Deborah Slater.

The Connecticut Child Exploitation Task Force, which is housed at the main FBI office in New Haven, investigates crimes against children occurring over the Internet and provides computer forensic review services for participating agencies. For more information about the task force, or to report child exploitation crimes, please contact the FBI at 203-777-6311.

This prosecution is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which is aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

To report cases of child exploitation, please visit www.cybertipline.com.