Earlier today, John Capuano, a New York City school guidance counselor and teacher’s union representative, pled guilty at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, to Transportation of Child Pornography in Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Today’s plea proceeding took place before United States Magistrate Judge Gary R. Brown. At sentencing, Capuano faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years.
As set forth in the charging instruments and the defendant’s plea allocution, in April 2015, an undercover HSI agent, as part of an ongoing effort to locate individuals sharing child pornography, found child pornography images and videos involving children as young as 3-5 years’ old which had been posted by Capuano to a chat room in a publicly available Internet application. After tracing location information for the account used to post the images, law enforcement obtained a search warrant and executed on May 28, 2015, at Capuano’s residence in Valley Stream, New York.
During the search, Capuano spoke with law enforcement personnel following a waiver of his Miranda rights and admitted that he used the Internet application to trade child pornography and posted the images located by the undercover agent. Capuano also identified his personal telephone and his work telephone as a teacher’s union representative as devices he used to access these materials. Capuano was arrested and remains incarcerated.
