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 MARC S. SARDELLA, age 49, of Guilderland, New York, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn in Federal Court in Albany on his guilty plea to a one count Information charging him with the possession of child pornography. SARDELLA was sentenced to 78 months imprisonment and ordered to serve a life time 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.

SARDELLA plead guilty on September 27, 2007. In connection with his plea, he admitted the following:

On January 28, 2006, numerous images depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct...were recovered from his residence. These images had been recovered from a black briefcase owned and used by SARDELLA. Said images depict individuals under the age of 18 engaged in, among other things, vaginal sex, oral sex, masturbation and the lascivious exhibition of the genitals and pubic area...

On January 28, 2006, an Apple G5 computer, used by SARDELLA, was also recovered from his residence. A forensic examination of this computer was subsequently conducted. Over 600 images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct...were recovered from this computer....Many of these images depict prepubescent minors engaged in such conduct...

When interviewed by law enforcement officials on January 28, 2006, SARDELLA admitted that he used his Apple computer and the Internet to view and download child pornography. He also admitted that he printed some of these images and kept them in his black briefcase. SARDELLA noted that he obtained such images from a website... In addition, on January 28, 2006, SARDELLA, in a written letter, admitted that he viewed and downloaded computer images of young girls and that some of these image depicted girls that were “too young” and that were illegal.

At the time of his offense, SARDELLA was employed as a teacher at the Gardner- Dickinson Elementary School in North Greenbush, New York.

The case was investigated by the Guilderland and North Greenbush Police Departments. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Predator Task Force assisted in the investigation.

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