Faces More Jail Time For Dirty Downloads
A convicted sex offender who was arrested last August for sharing files of child sexual abuse on a peer-to-peer computer network has pleaded guilty to promoting child pornography and related charges.
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown identified the defendant as Eduardo Medina, 35, of 196th Street in Hollis, who appeared last Tuesday, July 2, before Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Barry Kron and pled guilty to Penal Law 263.15 (promoting a sexual performance by a child) and a violation of state Correction Law 168-f and t (failure to report his Internet service provider to the state).
Medina, who has been in jail in lieu of $500,000 bail since his indictment in September 2013, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 18, 2014, to between 3 1/2 and seven years in prison on the penal law charge and a concurrent one year prison term on the correction law charge.
“In pleading guilty, the defendant has admitted to sharing through his computer disturbing videos of young children being sexually abused,” said Brown. “It is important for the public to remember that these images are, for all intents and purposes, crime scene photos as they depict real children being cruelly victimized both physically and emotionally and who will have to carry the painful memory of that which occurred to them for the rest of their lives. As such, the sentence to be meted out by the court is more than warranted.”
According to the charges, police executed a court-authorized search warrant at Medina’s apartment at approximately 7 p.m. on Aug. 28, 2013, and recovered his laptop computer, various external storage media and a cell phone.
A forensic preview on the laptop led to the recovery of 14 videos of children-approximately six to 12 years in age-depicted in a sexual manner or performing sexual acts. The videos were downloaded onto the laptop between 12:35 p.m. and 1:05 p.m. on Aug. 28, 2013, using peer-to-peer networks, whereby computer users may directly connect to each other via the Internet in order to exchange files with each other. It allows one to search for files contained on other computers on the network.
In a peer-to-peer network, each computer on the network can access the files of the other computers on the network which a user has selected to share on the network.
Medina is a registered Level 3 sex offender based on a 2001 conviction in Manhattan for sodomy in the first degree involving a child less than 11 years old (the crime is now known as criminal sexual act), for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The investigation was conducted by Det Damon Gergar, of the NYPD Major Case Squad, Vice Enforcement Division, under the supervision of Sgt. Sam Melisi and Lt. Marc Morales, and the overall supervision of Deputy Inspector Anthony Favale.
Senior Assistant District Attorney Kateri A. Gasper and now retired Assistant District Attorney Robert D. Alexander, chief of the District Attorney’s Computer Crimes Unit, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Anthony M. Communiello, bureau chief of the District Attorney’s Special Proceedings Bureau, and Oscar W. Ruiz, deputy bureau chief, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Peter A. Crusco and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Linda M. Cantoni.
