Pikesville Man Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison For Possessing Child Pornography
Baltimore, Maryland - U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar sentenced Dagoberto Castaneda, age 33, a citizen of El Salvador and a resident of Pikesville, Maryland, today to three years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for possessing child pornography. As a consequence of his conviction, Castaneda will be subject to removal from the United States when he has completed serving his sentence. Judge Bredar ordered that upon his release from prison, Castaneda must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Special Agent in Charge William Winter of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); Chief James W. Johnson of the Baltimore County Police Department; and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger.
According to the plea agreement, on February 28, 2011, an undercover Baltimore County detective downloaded three video files and a ‘shared” folder from Castaneda’s computer file sharing programs. A search warrant was executed on March 15, 2011 at Castaneda’s residence. A laptop and desktop computer, along with their hard drives, were seized and found to contain over 600 images of minors, including minors under the age of 12, engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Castaneda had been running a variety of file sharing programs over an extended period of time. There were 1,580 upload sessions involving others receiving files from Castaneda on one file sharing program, and Castaneda had run 582 download sessions.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources."
United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI, ICE-HSI, Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office and Baltimore County Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Judson T. Mihok, who prosecuted the case.
