Brevard Man Pleads Guilty to Producing Child Pornography

April 30, 2010 - ORLANDO—United States Attorney A. Brian Albritton announces that William Ciccotto (age 51, of Micco, Florida) pleaded guilty today to producing child pornography. Ciccotto faces a mandatory minimum 15 years in federal prison and a maximum of 30 years.

According to the plea agreement, Ciccotto created a fictitious MySpace account in the name of “Cindy Westin,” and posed as a young girl between the ages of 13 and 14 years old. On the MySpace profile, Ciccotto posted pictures of a young girl whom he represented was “Cindy Westin” and made daily posts. Ciccotto also created a hotmail account.

While misrepresenting his identity as the young teen “Cindy Westin,” Ciccotto sent “friend requests” to young girls on MySpace. Ciccotto befriended these children, some who were as young as 10 years old, and chatted with them on both MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). During the chats, he talked to them about sex and persuaded them to use their cell phones to take pictures of themselves engaging in sexually explicit conduct. He then directed these young girls to send the pictures to his hotmail account.

Ciccotto also transmitted pictures of child and/or adult pornography to many of his victims over the Internet using AIM or e-mail, and, acting as “Cindy Westin,” persuaded these girls to photograph themselves engaging in the same sexually explicit conduct as depicted in the photographs he sent. Ciccotto often misrepresented to his victims that the pornographic pictures he sent depicted “Cindy Westin.”

On January 26, 2010, law enforcement agents executed a search warrant at Ciccotto's home in Micco and seized his computers. Agents located more than 3500 pictures of child pornography and more than 1700 videos of child pornography. They also located MySpace and AIM chats between Ciccotto posing as “Cindy Westin” and young girls during which Ciccotto had persuaded the girls to take pictures of themselves engaging in sexually explicit conduct and to send the pictures to his hotmail account. Agents also executed a search warrant for the contents of Ciccotto’s hotmail account and found the sexually explicit pictures of 13 of his young victims.

During an interview with agents, Ciccotto admitted to possessing and distributing child pornography through a private peer-to-peer network from his home. He said that he had been interested in child pornography for the past 15 years, that he had possessed and traded child pornography for the past 10 years, and that he had traded images of child pornography as recently as the day before, on January 25, 2010. Ciccotto also admitted to establishing the fictitious MySpace account in the name of “Cindy Westin” to convince young girls to take nude pictures and send them to his hotmail account. According to Ciccotto, during his communications with young girls that he met on MySpace, he obtained their telephone numbers and communicated with them via text messaging using a special trac phone that he purchased specifically for this purpose and to conceal his true identity.



Ciccotto also said that sometimes the girls told him where they were, and he would go to their location’s to watch them.

This case was investigated by the Orlando Innocent Images Task Force which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Attorney General’s Office, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Karen L. Gable.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the 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 locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov. For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov and click on the tab "other resources" or please visit the Attorney General of Florida's website www.safeflorida.net.