Rochester Man Pleads Guilty To Possession Of Child Pornography

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. announced today that Scott Wilbert, 47, of Rochester, NY, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan W. Feldman to possession of child pornography. According to the plea agreement, the defendant will be sentenced to serve 15 years in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Marangola, who is handling the case, stated that the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force identified Wilbert sending child pornography from his computer web camera to another user of an online chat site. As a result, the New York State Police began to investigate the defendant, who was identified as a registered sex offender from a prior conviction for sexual abuse of a child.

In February 2016, officers executed a search warrant at Wilbert’s residence on Garson Avenue in Rochester and seized a laptop computer and SD cards containing thousands of images and videos of child pornography. A forensic examination of the computer and SD cards recovered sexually explicit photographs of prepubescent children, some as young as toddlers.

The plea is the culmination of an investigation by the New York State Police, under the direction of Major Eric Laughton, and Special Agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation Task Force, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Gary Loeffert.         

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.

Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date before U.S. District Judge David G. Larimer.