Anthony Gentile, who was arrested in his Guilderland home in 2014 on six counts of promoting sexual performance of a child, has accepted a plea deal.

Gentile pleaded guilty to three of the six counts — one count of receipt of child pornograhy and two counts of possession of child pornography, according to the plea agreement filed with the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. As part of the deal, Gentile will pay restitution and forfeit computer equipment.

In turn, the government will not seek other federal criminal charges in the case.

Gentile will be sentenced on Oct. 24 at the United States Courthouse in Albany. Gentile’s lawyer, Trevor W. Hannigan of the Hannigan Law Firm in Albany, said he had “no comment” on the case or what he hoped for in the sentencing.

On the first count, receipt of child pornography, Gentile faces a maximum of 20 years in prison with a mandatory five-year minimum term. On the counts for possession of child porngraphy, he faces a maximum of 20 years with a maximum fine of $250,000. He also must have a term of supervised release between five years and life, and he must register as a sex offender, the plea agreement says.

Gentile was 54 when he was arrested. He lived then at 6019 Baneberry Drive in Guilderland and worked for General Electric as a project manager in computer systems. He now lives with his mother in Flushing, New York, having lost his job at GE after the arrest, according to court papers.

At the time of Gentile’s arrest, Robert Winn, head of the Investigation Division of the Colonie Police Department, told The Enterprise that Christopher Smith, working undercover in the “cyber world,” was investigating peer-to-peer file-sharing networks when he discovered Gentile looking for child pornography.

The P2P networks, as they are called, let users access videos, games, music, and books using a program that searches for other computers on P2P networks.

Investigator Smith received child pornography from the same IP address on six days, Winn said. An IP, or Internet Protocol, address is a numerical label given to each device in a computer network. Altogether, 58 pornographic images were sent from the IP address that turned out to be Gentile’s, Winn said.

The 58 images depicted sexual acts with children ranging in age from infant to prepubescent, Winn said, adding, “It’s not pretty.” Winn said police found no indication that local children were harmed; the child pornography appeared to be made commercially, much of it abroad in eastern Europe or Asia.

Since Smith, in addition to working for the Colonie Police, is also a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crimes Against Children Task Force, the FBI helped identify Gentile as did the Guilderland Police Department.

“In 2016, our case was dismissed in favor of federal prosecution,” said Heather Orth of the Albany County District Attorney’s Office last week.

The federal court papers state that six electronic devices were seized from Gentile’s Baneberry Drive home and describe in detail images and videos found on them: “Some of the files depicted an adult male placing his penis into the vagina of a prepubescent female who is approximately 2 years old; other files depicted a female approximately 9 years of age engaging in sexual acts with a dog,” for example.

Psychiatrist's view

The court papers also include a June 2017 evaluation of Gentile conducted by Richard B. Krueger, M.D., who is qualified in forensic psychiatry, and sent to Gentile’s lawyer, Hannigan. The evaluation says Gentile was raised in Bayside, Queens; that his father was an alcoholic; that he did well in school, ultimately earning a bachelor of science degree in accounting from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1982 and a master’s degree in business administration in computer systems from Baruch College in 1985.

It also says Gentile is 6 feet tall and weighs 315 pounds, having gained 70 pounds since his arrest.

After his case was turned over to federal authorities, Gentile was released under the Federal Pretrial Release Electronic Monitoring system. He sees a Pretrial Services officer once a month and, since February 2016, has been getting weekly individual therapy, which is paid for by Federal Pretrial Services.

Krueger reports that Gentile said he began looking at sexual magazines, like Playboy, as a teenager and in the 1990s he “began to visit discussion groups on the web and in this context began to look at pornography and eventually child pornograpy.” Gentile said he was “sexually aroused” by images of prepubescent, pubescent, and post pubescent females and “would masturbate to them.”

His wife became alienated and divorced him in 2015, Krueger writes.

He also writes that Gentile said “he had never tried to sexually abuse a minor and that he had never actually sexually abused a minor in a hands-on way. He said that he had never had conversations over the computer with a minor or otherwise had tried to entice a minor.”

Gentile takes an antidepressant, Krueger writes, and said “he had never had a problem with drugs or alcohol.” He has no other arrests.

Krueger also writes of Gentile, “He said that he clearly had had an issue with the compulsive use of pornography for 10 years prior to his arrest. He said that he was in 100% control, or complete control of his sexual urges and behavior currently.”

Krueger reported on a battery of tests he had given Gentile and concluded his low score on one indicates he is not a psychopath. He also writes, “Mr. Gentile’s risk according to 5 actuarial instruments, used to asses the risk of another sexual crime is low.”

Krueger’s opinion is, “Although Mr. Gentile has diagnoses that reflect a masturbatory interest in images of minors there is no indication that he has attempted to sexually abuse or actually sexually abused a minor. He has been compliant with conditions of federal probation and with treatment and there is no indication that he has used or attempted to use pornography or access child pornography again since his arrest in 2014. Oftentimes the intervention of the legal system in the form of an arrest is ‘curative’ inasmuch as it presents such an aversive condition that individuals learn from it and are able to control their behavior. It is my opinion that this is the case with Mr. Gentile.”

Krueger also writes that Gentile’s “risk of re-offense is low and in my opinion remote.”

Krueger concludes, “I believe that a sentence of probation would be sufficient in Mr. Gentile’s case to meet the ends of justice. Finally, research has demonstrated that neither incarceration per se, as a single variable, nor the length of incarceration, has any effect on the risk of recidivism...and incarceration may even increase the likelihood of recidivism...Federal pretrial release would continue monitoring Mr. Gentile to ensure that he continues to comply as he has since at least 2016.”