Oswego County Man Pleads Guilty to Receipt and Possession Of Child Pornography

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Gary Goodale, age 40, of Fulton, New York, pled guilty today before Senior United States District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy to one count of receipt of child pornography and three counts of possession of child pornography, announced Acting United States Attorney Antoinette T. Bacon and Kevin M. Kelly, Special Agent in Charge of the Buffalo Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).  The terms of Goodale’s plea agreement call for a sentence of at least 35 years, and up to 50 years of imprisonment, to be followed by a lifetime term of supervised release.  Sentencing is set for September 8, 2021.

As part of his guilty plea, Goodale admitted that he used his personal computer to receive images of child pornography over the internet, and that he possessed child pornography on three electronic devices.  A forensic review of Goodale’s cellular telephone and two portable electronic storage devices revealed that all three contained numerous image files depicting child pornography.  Goodale admitted that the images he possessed include sexually explicit photographs of two minors that he produced himself.   

Goodale was previously convicted on December 8, 1999, in Oswego County Court for Sodomy in the First Degree in violation of New York Penal Law, Section 130.50(3), which makes it unlawful to engage in deviate sexual intercourse with another person who is less than eleven years old, and was sentenced at that time to 8 years imprisonment.

Goodale’s case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, Syracuse Office with assistance from the New York State Police Troop D Computer Crimes Unit, the Oswego County District Attorney’s Office and the Fulton Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Geoffrey J. L. Brown.

This case is being prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorney's offices, 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 identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.