PRESS RELEASE

Glenn T. Suddaby, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York, and John F. Pikus, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albany Division, announced that JOSEPH P. BROWN, age 45, of Watervliet, New York, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy in Federal Court in Albany on his guilty plea to a one count Information charging him with the possession of child pornography. BROWN was sentenced to 60 months imprisonment and ordered to serve a lifetime term of supervised release. He also was ordered to (1) have no unsupervised contact with minors; (2) participate in a sex offender program; and (3) register with the New York State Sex Offender Registry Program. The court also ordered that various computer equipment be forfeited to the United States.

BROWN pled guilty on March 6, 2007. During his plea, he admitted that on January 28, 2004, his work computer was seized by his employer, the New York State Office of the State Comptroller, and approximately 35 images depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct were eventually recovered from this computer. He also admitted that a subsequent search of his home computer, which was seized on April 2, 2004, resulted in the recovery of approximately 286 still and 21 video images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Images depicting minors engaged in sadistic and masochistic conduct were also recovered from this computer. In addition, numerous stories about minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct were recovered from BROWN’S home computer. BROWN admitted that he sought sexually explicit images of girls between the ages of 13 and 17, and obtained them from Yahoo! Inc. Groups.

The case was investigated by the FBI’s Capital Region Cyber Predator Task Force and the New York Office of the State Comptroller.

CONTACT:

Thomas Spina Jr.
Assistant U.S. Attorney
tel.(518) 431-0247

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