Oakton Man Sentenced To 88 Months’ Imprisonment For Receipt Of Child Pornography

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Michael Cronin, 50, of Oakton, Va., was sentenced today to 88 months in prison for receipt of child pornography.
Dana J. Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Acting Special Agent in Charge Scot R. Rittenberg of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, made the announcement after U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, III sentenced the defendant.
Cronin pleaded guiltyon July 19, 2013.  According to court documents, undercover agents discovered Cronin using a peer-to-peer file sharing program to share child pornography images and videos.  A search warrant was executed and Cronin’s computers were found to contain over 2,000 child pornography files.  A large portion of these files were images or videos of known children.
This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations with support from the Northern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.  Special Assistant United States Attorney Alicia J. Yass, a Trial Attorney with the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.  Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.justice.gov/usao/vae.  Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on https://pcl.uscourts.gov.