Vanessa Roberts Avery, US Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced Thursday that Richard E. Smith, 67, of Southington, was sentenced in New Haven to 144 months of imprisonment, followed by 15 years of supervised release, for possessing millions of child sex abuse images and videos.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Smith’s criminal history includes convictions related to his sexual assault of boys in 1990 and 1998.
On October 1, 2020, Homeland Security Investigations special agents conducted a court-authorized search of Smith’s Southington residence. At the time of the search, Smith’s computer was running and connected to a website on the dark web dedicated to child pornography, and one of Smith’s four computer monitors displayed a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing numerous child pornography filenames and internet hyperlinks. Investigators seized Smith’s computer and electronic devices.
Forensic analysis of the seized devices revealed millions of images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including infants and toddlers.
Smith has been detained since his arrest on October 1, 2020. On November 28, 2022, he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.
This matter was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Southington Police Department, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Patrick J. Doherty and Nancy V. Gifford through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which is aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation.
For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
To report cases of child exploitation, please visit www.cybertipline.com.