A former cybersecurity official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in a child porn enterprise.
Timothy DeFoggi, 56, was convicted in August 2014 for his crimes, and was one of several persons nabbed in an FBI investigation of three child porn websites.
At the time, it was revealed that DeFoggi, the former acting director of cybersecurity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, registered as a member on one of the sites, all of which were run through the Tor network as a means of hiding members' identities. He was convicted on seven counts in August, including engaging in a child exploitation enterprise as well as in conspiracy to advertise and distribute child porn and accessing a computer with intent to view child porn.
On Monday, a federal judge in Nebraska handed down DeFoggi's 25-year prison sentence, a Department of Justice announcement said.
“According to evidence presented at trial, DeFoggi registered as a member of the Tor-network-based child pornography website on March 2, 2012, and maintained his membership and activity until Dec. 8, 2012, when the website was taken down by the FBI,” DOJ's release said. “The website's users utilized advanced technological means in order to undermine law enforcement's attempts to identify them.”
In December, it was revealed that the FBI employed methods of its own to subvert perpetrators' aims of remaining anonymous, including the use of Metasploit to facilitate its 2012 child porn investigation, called “Operation Torpedo."
On Monday, DOJ said that, along with using Tor, “an internet application specifically designed to facilitate anonymous communication,” members of the porn sites advised one another on methods of evading law enforcement, which included use of encryption, password-protecting online child porn collections, and installing software to “remove data from a user's computer."
The agency claimed that DeFoggi “suggested meeting one member in person to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and murder children.”
Four other members of the child porn site, which DeFoggi was a user of, were sentenced at various points last year.
Jason Flanary, then 42, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June; Wesley Cameron, then 22, received a 15-year prison sentence in October; and Zackary Austin, 28, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in November. Charles MacMillan, 29, was also sentenced in November of 2014, when he received a 12-year prison sentence.
Aaron McGrath, who was the administrator for all three of the child porn sites in question, was sentenced in January 2014 to 20 years in prison for his crimes, DOJ said.
