Captain gets 30 months in child-porn case

By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Mar 12, 2007 14:30:33 EDT

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — A military judge sentenced a Marine captain to 30 months of confinement and dismissal from service after finding him guilty of several pornography-related charges, officials said.

Capt. Richard B. Toschiaddi was found guilty of wrongful possession of obscene images of young children, transfer of child pornography, receiving and wrongfully reproducing child pornography, advertising and promoting and/or soliciting child pornography, and wrongful solicitation of child pornography, according to information provided by the Camp Pendleton, Calif., public affairs office.

The judge, Lt. Col. Tracy Daly, also found Toschiaddi, 35, guilty of three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, officials said. Under the sentence issued by Daly, Toschiaddi would have to forfeit all pay and allowances for 30 months.

Federal agents took Toschiaddi, who is married, into custody last year after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement got a tip from the German National Police. The case was investigated by the FBI, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and ICE.

At the time, Toschiaddi was working at the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity at Camp Pendleton. He was formally charged last year under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

An undercover FBI agent, in a sting operation, sent a folder of images to a file server that solicited and shared thousands of obscene or pornographic photographs and videos of children through an online chat channel, according to an FBI special agent who testified during the court-martial.

Federal investigators contended that the images landed in a file server on a personal computer in Toschiaddi’s home. Prosecutors argued that the officer was “BiGrl,” the nickname of the user who received and shared child pornography with other users of an Internet chat channel called “100%PreteenGirlSexPics,” which investigators said caters to pornography and child pornography.

FBI Special Agent Kenneth Jensen testified that he sent a corrupted set of images from the Hubble Space Telescope posing as child-porn images, since the agency doesn’t permit the transfer of pornography. He said he was downloading other images and videos that included child-pornography victims known to the FBI when the chat session was abruptly closed. Jensen testified that he ultimately traced “BiGrl” to a computer with an Internet protocol address belonging to Toschiaddi.

But defense attorneys disputed the claims, saying that the moniker belonged to someone else. At one point during the trial, lead defense attorney Bill Rogers questioned an FBI agent about bots, a form of malicious software that enables one computer to be controlled remotely by another

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