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Daniel Marc Lofaro, 40, of Fairfax, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for receiving, possessing, and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and coercion and enticement of minors, federal authorities announced on Thursday.
According to court documents, in November 2021, Lofaro posed as a 22 year old on social media while chatting with a 12 year old.
Lofaro "told the victim in graphic detail how he would have sex with the victim and continued to entice and exploit the child even when the victim hardly responded."
He also requested nude images and asked the child to join him in video chats.
Further investigation found that he also began engaging with a 14-year-old in 2019 through an online dating app, asking repeatedly for sexually explicit photos and videos, which were reciprocated in February 2022, prosecutors say.
The minor later alerted law enforcement when Lofaro asked for their address so he could visit the victim, and then the victim stopped talking to him "because he was asking the victim to send him photographs every day, even when the child was at school."
Lofaro last reached out to the teen in May 2022, when police executed a search warrant at his Virginia home.
He collected CSAM for nearly a decade, amassing approximately 600 CSAM images and videos on two laptop computers, investigators said, including files that depicted the sexual abuse of children, as well as the rape of a toddler and prepubescent children.
Lofaro also distributed the CSAM files through social media, prosecutors added, and was a member of multiple groups dedicated to discussing the sexual abuse of children.
"(He) frequently discussed with other users his sexual interest in children and the sexual abuse of children in real life," including one instance when he spoke about his sexual abuse of an underage relative while the child slept, and that he was "looking for someone who has a daughter that they are willing to share."
Before his arrest, Lofaro was a prominent face in his field of study, having created a humanoid robot that threw out the first pitch of an MLB game and hosted conferences and published works in journals throughout the world.
According to his LinkedIn account, before his time at the US Naval Research Laboratory and George Mason, Laforo also spent time at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
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