Saratoga County Man Pleads Guilty to Distributing Child Pornography

ALBANY, NEW YORK - Robert Gibeault, Jr., age 50, of Gansevoort, New York, pled guilty today to three counts of distribution of child pornography, and one count of possession of child pornography.

The announcement was made by United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith and Kevin Kelly, Special Agent in Charge of the Buffalo Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

As part of his guilty plea, Gibeault admitted to using file-sharing program BitTorrent to distribute child pornography to other BitTorrent users from May 2017 through September 2017.  His laptop computer contained approximately 400 video files and 100 image files depicting child pornography.  These included files that Gibeault had previously distributed over the BitTorrent network.

Sentencing is scheduled for February 11, 2020.

Gibeault, who is detained pending sentencing, faces a minimum term of imprisonment of 5 years, and a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years.  The Court is also required to impose a term of supervised release of between 5 years and life, and Gibeault will be required to register as a sex offender.  A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the particular statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other factors

This case was investigated by HSI, with assistance from the New York State Police and Colonie Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emmet O’Hanlon.

This case is being prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood.  Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), and is designed to marshal 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 https://www.justice.gov/psc.