Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Marangola, who handled the
case, stated that the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force identified Wilbert
sending child pornography from his computer web camera to another user of an
online chat site. As a result, the New York State Police began to investigate
the defendant, who was identified as a registered sex offender from a prior
conviction for sexual abuse of a child.
In February 2016, officers executed a search warrant at
Wilbert’s residence on Garson Avenue in Rochester and seized a laptop computer
and SD cards containing thousands of images and videos of child pornography. A
forensic examination of the computer and SD cards recovered sexually explicit
photographs of prepubescent children, some as young as toddlers.
The sentencing is the culmination of an investigation by the
New York State Police, under the direction of Major Eric Laughton, and Special
Agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation Task Force,
under the direction of Special Agent-in- Charge Gary Loeffert.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a
nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual
exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led
by 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 better locate, apprehend and prosecute
individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and
rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit
www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
