By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – A Florida private investigator was sentenced to 42 years in prison on Monday for using a minor to produce child pornography, which was discovered after authorities searched his computers following his arrest last year for hacking a global charity. Timothy Sedlak, 43, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton in Orlando after a federal jury in May found him guilty on charges including that he produced and possessed child pornography, according to court records. A lawyer for Sedlak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sedlak, of Ocoee, Florida, was arrested in September 2015 on charges that he launched almost 400,000 attempts to gain unauthorized access to an unidentified New York-based global charitable organization’s computer network. At the time of his arrest, Sedlak told authorities he was researching charities to determine if any were unintentionally financing Islamist militant groups by sending funds to Middle East charities that were then seized by militants. The same day as Sedlak’s arrest, U.S. Secret Service agents executed a search warrant at his home, seizing among other things, 30 computers and four external hard drives.
An examination of those computers found files containing child pornography, including a number of images taken from 2009 to 2011 depicting Sedlak himself sexually abusing a toddler, prosecutors said. Agents also discovered hundreds of child pornography images that were downloaded from the internet, prosecutors said.
The separate hacking case remains pending in federal court in Manhattan. He has plead not guilty in that case.
(Editing by Alistair Bell)
Florida man in hacking probe gets 42 years in prison for child porn
By Nate Raymond
