BALTIMORE, MD—A previously convicted Baltimore County man has been sentenced to prison on child pornography charges.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher has sentenced August Candeloro III, a/k/a “Nick,” 35, of Catonsville, to 15 years in federal prison, followed by lifetime supervised release, for a federal charge of possession of child pornography.
The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron; Special Agent in Charge James C. Harris of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Baltimore; Acting Superintendent of the Maryland State Police Colonel Roland L. Butler, Jr.; and Interim Chief Dennis J. Delp of the Baltimore County Police Department.
According to his guilty plea, beginning in 2019 Candeloro began using a messaging application to send images depicting the sexual abuse of children. After additional investigation, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Candeloro’s residence and seized his cellular phone from his bedroom. The phone was found to contain conversations between Candeloro and other users of the messaging application. Candeloro also joined private chat groups on the messaging application, many of which had chatroom names indicative of trading child pornography.
Candeloro posted links to a secure cloud storage platform in many of the chatrooms. The secure cloud storage platform allows the user to create links containing encrypted files and chats with keys controlled by the user. Candeloro’s phone also revealed over 2000 images of suspected child pornography, including images involving prepubescent minors and depicting sadistic and masochistic conduct.
Candeloro was previously convicted in two cases for a second-degree sex offense involving a 13-year-old victim in Howard County and Baltimore County Circuit Courts. As a result of those convictions, Candeloro was required to register as a sex offender.
