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Press Release

Assistant Scout Master Sentenced For Receipt Of Child Pornography

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of New York

CONTACT:   Barbara Burns
PHONE:        (716) 843-5817
FAX #:           (716) 551-3051

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. announced today that Daniel Huzinec, 26, of Buffalo, NY, who was convicted of receipt of child pornography, was sentenced to 168 months imprisonment and lifetime supervised release by U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Lamarque, who handled the case, stated that the investigation began in December 2014, when the defendant shared photographs of male children engaged in sexually explicit conduct on a peer-to-peer website.

On January 27, 2015, agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Buffalo, executed a search warrant at the defendant’s residence in South Buffalo. Numerous items were seized from the residence including a laptop computer.  During the execution of the warrant, the defendant, an Assistant Scout Master, waived his Miranda rights and admitted that in January 2015, while chaperoning a Boy Scout camping trip, he took several sexually explicit pictures of a sleeping 16-year-old boy with his cell phone.

A subsequent forensic evaluation of the electronic evidence seized from the defendant’s residence determined that such evidence contained images and videos of child pornography, including the sexually explicit pictures of the sleeping child that the defendant had admitted to taking. Law enforcement officers also discovered that Huzinec produced child pornography of another boy.  Specifically, in November 2014, Huzinec enticed a 15-year-old boy, a former member of the defendant’s Boy Scout troop, to send him sexually explicit pictures by creating a fake email account and posing as a teenage girl. Those pictures were also found on the defendant’s computer. 

“The Boy Scouts are an organization which promotes values such as duty and honor,” noted United States Attorney Kennedy. “There is nothing honorable about sexually exploiting children, and today’s sentence should send a message to any child predator out there—if you do anything to hurt our youth, ‘be prepared’ to spend a long time in jail.”

“This individual violated his position of trust with the Boy Scouts to exploit and take advantage of young boys under his supervision," said Kevin Kelly, Special Agent-in- Charge of HSI Buffalo. "The exploitation of children is reprehensible, and HSI has teams dedicated to these types of investigations to ensure that we locate and arrest child predators and bring them to justice."

The sentencing is a result of an investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, under the direction of Special Agent-in-Charge Kevin Kelly.

Updated February 16, 2018