Man Sentenced for Possession of Child Pornography

BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Justin Jeffrey Amato, 28, of Cheektowaga, New York, who was convicted of possession of child pornography, was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Chief Judge William M. Skretny.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron J. Mango, who handled the case, stated that on January 28, 2009, the defendant possessed approximately 133 images and 34 videos of child pornography which were stored on his computer. Amato obtained these images and videos over the Internet using a file sharing program. Many of the images and videos depicted minors less than 12 years of age, and some of the images and videos contained depictions of violence which would have been painful to the child.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), 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 to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

The sentencing is the culmination of an investigation on the part of Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Acting Special Agent-In- Charge Richard W. Kollmar, and Detectives of the Cheektowaga Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police David J. Zack. Additional assistance was provided by the Western New York Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, which conducted the forensic analysis of the computer.