Mexico Sentences US Man Gary Michael Feroglia To 199 Years In Jail For Child Pornography

A Mexican judge in the southwestern city of Colima handed down a jail term of 199 years to an American citizen on Wednesday for running a child pornography network for over a decade. Officials reportedly found that Gary Michael Feroglia possessed over 100,000 images and 207 videos of child pornography on hard drives.

The Mexican court also fined Feroglia the equivalent of $96,000.

Feroglia was arrested in 2010 from Manzanillo city in Colima for “taking images of a minor girl which he then sent to other countries on the Internet,” the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, citing the prosecutor’s office. The girl's mother, who had reportedly consented for her daughter to be clicked, has also been sentenced to nine years in jail on the charge of corruption of minors.

Feroglia shared photographs of children via Internet from an IP address in Manzanillo, the investigators reportedly said.

In 2004, the U.S. government issued an arrest warrant against Feroglia on charges of sexual abuse of children and child pornography, and had been searching for him since then, El Mexico, a local newspaper, reported.

The prosecutor’s office for crimes against women and people trafficking, said, according to AFP, that it has recorded over 4,000 Web pages for child pornography in Mexico.

In April, officials from the United Nations had called on countries to take measures to invest in children working or living on the street to ensure they are not sexually exploited.

“Children in street situations, often having escaped from violence, face a very high risk of being sexually exploited,” Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, a special rapporteur for the United Nations, dealing with the sale and sexual exploitation of children, said in a statement in April. “This vicious circle of abuse must be brought to an end by effectively addressing and preventing ill treatment in all settings, including in families,” de Boer-Buquicchio added.