Newfield Man Sentenced to 60 Months in Federal Prison for Possession of Child Pornography
| U.S. Attorney’s Office December 07, 2009 |
CAMDEN—A Newfield man was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison today for possessing child pornography on his home computer, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman also ordered Robert Kevin Carlino, 32, to serve 10 years of supervised release upon the completion of his prison term. Judge Hillman continued the defendant’s release on a $50,000 bond, with the conditions of home confinement with electronic monitoring, pending his surrender to officials with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on a date to be determined by prison authorities.
On March 17, 2009, law enforcement officers searched Carlino’s home and seized two of his computers. Carlino was arrested on March 27, 2009, by Special Agents with the FBI's South Jersey Resident Agency and Investigators with the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office on a federal criminal Complaint. According to the Complaint, Carlino was a youth minister at the Malaga Assembly of God Church in Malaga from 2007 until the time of his arrest.
Carlino pleaded guilty before Judge Hillman on Aug. 12, 2009, to a one-count Information that charged him with possessing child pornography. At his plea hearing, Carlino admitted that he downloaded images of child pornography from e-mails sent to him by others and from various Internet sites. The images were of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, Carlino admitted.
Carlino accessed an invitation only Internet forum with links to various incest chatrooms used primarily to share and comment on child pornography. Carlino then downloaded a folder that contained a total of 134 images of child pornography. All of 134 images involved the same prepubescent female, who is a known victim (that is, a real child who has been identified by law enforcement officers and entered into the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children “NCMEC” database), and who was known to be approximately 9 years old at the time the images were taken.
In determining the actual sentence, Judge Hillman consulted the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which provide appropriate sentencing ranges that take into account the severity and characteristics of the offense, the defendant’s criminal history, if any, and other factors. The judge, however, is not bound by those guidelines in determining a sentence.
Parole has been abolished in the federal system. Defendants who are given custodial terms must serve nearly all that time.
Fishman credited Special Agents of the FBI’s South Jersey Resident Agency, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk in Philadelphia, and Investigators with the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office, under the direction of Prosecutor Sean F. Dalton, with the investigation leading to the guilty plea.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana V. Carrig of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Camden.