News Release
U.S. Department of Justice
United States Attorney
District of Rhode Island
July 29, 2009
Pawtucket man is sentenced to 12 & ½ years
for child pornography
A federal judge today sentenced Jose Hilario, 29, of Pawtucket, to 150 months in prison for possessing and distributing child pornography. Hilario traded child pornography with other collectors across the country, and boasted that he would never get caught. FBI agents seized from Hilario’s computer equipment about 85,000 pictures and videos containing pornographic images of young girls, some of them infants.
Acting United States Attorney Luis M. Matos announced the sentence, which Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mary M. Lisi imposed in U.S. District Court, Providence. Judge Lisi also ordered Hilario to pay $25,000 restitution to one of the victims depicted in the images. It was the first time a federal child pornography restitution provision was invoked in Rhode Island.
In September, Hilario pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child pornography. At the plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Terrence P. Donnelly said the government could prove that FBI agents traced distribution of child pornography to Hilario at his home on Mary Street, Pawtucket. They developed evidence that Hilario participated in Internet chat rooms in which he traded hundreds of child pornography images and videos with collectors in Florida and Ohio.
In April 2008, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Hilario’s home and seized a computer and an external hard drive. The external hard drive housed 27 folders containing 83,257 files, most of them images of child pornography, many with graphic titles describing the activity in the images. In addition, the computer contained about 1800 child pornography videos.
Also on the external hard drive was a collection of more than 1,800 news articles describing arrests and prosecution of child pornography defendants. In one folder was a document entitled “Jose M. Hilario private Diary...My Perverted Child Porn Confession...” It reads, in part, “Im above the law for getting away with the crimes of possessing, distributing, producing, enjoying and possessing private child pornographic.” The document also reads, “But I know I will never get caught. I’m too clever & smarter than the FBI or Police they are just puppets under my toes....” FBI agents arrested Hilario on April 18, 2008, and he has been detained in federal custody since his arrest.
The FBI investigated and Assistant U.S. Attorney Donnelly prosecuted the case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative against Internet-based exploitation of children.
Contact: 401-709-5032
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