A 75-year-old Slingerlands man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually exploiting a child. Daniel Fuino, the defendant, received the sentence after pleading guilty to charges that he used a young girl to produce child pornography while he was supposed to be looking after her, according to an official statement from the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York.
As part of his plea, Fuino admitted that between the summer of 2022 and April 2023, while babysitting the child, he engaged in the illicit conduct; the victim, a female child born in 2016, later reported the abuse she had endured after attending a school presentation on inappropriate touching in May 2023. Following the victim's report, federal authorities executed a search warrant at Fuino's residence, during which he confessed to the abusive actions.
At sentencing, United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino decided that in addition to his prison term, Fuino would serve 15 years of supervised release, the Department of Justice reports. The judge also ordered the man to pay $36,962.25 in restitution and imposed $5,100 in special assessments; upon his release, he will be required to register as a sex offender.
This case fell under the purview of Project Safe Childhood, a governmental initiative designed to combine efforts across federal, state, and local levels to track and prosecute offenders who use the Internet to target children it also serves to identify and rescue victims of this expanding crime, emphasizing the gravity and pervasiveness of child exploitation in the digital age, assistance was also provided by the New York State Police and the Colonie Police Department, with the FBI leading the investigation into Fuino's activities. Assistant United States Attorney Benjamin S. Clark prosecuted this case.
