Motivational speaker sentenced for child porn
A U.S. motivational speaker who took his laptop computer to a Best Buy store for service has been sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison for transporting child pornography, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. The project uses federal, state and local resources to locate and prosecute individuals who exploit children through the Internet.
Michael Fortino, 47, was a nationally recognized motivational speaker and founder of The Center for Lifestyle Management before his arrest in November 2005.
Fortino, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty in February in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas to one count of transporting child pornography across state lines.
Fortino frequently traveled across the country as a self-employed author, speaker and media personality, often bringing his laptop with him, according to the DOJ. He took his laptop to a Fayetteville, Arkansas, Best Buy Co. store in November 2005 after he found that it was not working properly, the DOJ said.
Best Buy computer technicians discovered several images of what they believed to be child pornography and alerted local police. A forensic review of Fortino's computer by the Fayetteville Police Department found that he had visited Web sites containing child pornography on multiple occasions and often saved images from those sites to his computer, the DOJ said. Police found hundreds of child pornography images on the laptop, as well as several video files from a hidden video camera Fortino had placed in a bedroom on his personal boat, the DOJ said.
The videos depicted children between the ages of 11 and 13 changing clothes and exposing their genitals in the process.
During sentencing Tuesday, Judge Jimm Larry Hendren ordered Fortino to pay a $10,000 fine, forfeit computer equipment seized in the investigation and serve 20 years of supervised release, in addition to the prison sentence.
IDG News Service
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