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August Candeloro III - also known as “Nick” - who was previously convicted of a sex offense involving a 13-year-old victim in Howard County, pleaded guilty in federal court to the new child porn charge, prosecutors announced.
Beginning in 2019, Candeloro began using a messaging application to send images depicting the sexual abuse of children, officials said. After additional investigation, law enforcement agents executed a search warrant at his home and seized his cell phone from his bedroom, which contained damning evidence.
Prosecutors said that the phone was found to contain conversations between Candeloro and other users of the messaging application, including private chat groups, “many of which had chatroom names indicative of trading child pornography.”
Candeloro also posted links to a secure cloud storage platform in many of the chatrooms, according to officials. The secure cloud storage platform allows the user to create links containing encrypted files and chats with keys controlled by the user.
The phone also contained more than 2,000 images of suspected child pornography, including images involving prepubescent minors and depicting sadistic and masochistic conduct.
Officials noted that in January 2010, Candeloro was convicted of a previous offense involving a teen and was required to register as a sexual offender as a result.
Candeloro has been detained since his arrest on May 17, 2021.
When he is sentenced in October, he will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a maximum of 20 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography.
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