A former cybersecurity chief at the Department of Health and Human Services Timothy DeFoggi was sentenced to 25 years in prison on child pornography charges Monday, according to the Department of Justice. "Using the same technological expertise he employed as Acting Director of Cyber Security at HHS, DeFoggi attempted to sexually exploit children and traffic in child pornography through an anonymous computer network of child predators," Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement.
A federal jury in the District of Nebraska convicted DeFoggi of child exploitation and conspiracy to distribute child pornography on Aug. 26. The 56-year-old was a member of a pornography website on the Tor network — a web browser that helps users remain anonymous online — from May 2012 until December 2012 when it was taken down by the FBI, according to the statement. He is the sixth person to be convicted in an ongoing federal investigation into three Tor-network-based child pornography websites, according to the DOJ.
“Today's sentence and the others imposed earlier demonstrate that those who exploit children will be aggressively pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg of the District of Nebraska added in the statement. “Those who think they are acting anonymously on the Internet will be found and held accountable.”
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