Child-porn scheme gets former Palm Beach County schools worker 25-year prison sentence
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A 68-year-old former Palm Beach County Schools maintenance worker was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday after admitting he bullied women he met online, convinced them to sexually molest their children and ordered them to send him pictures and video of them doing it.
Dennis Pollard, who lives in Pahokee, spent years preying on both young mothers and children throughout the world, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Schiller said in court papers.
Pollard scoured Facebook Messenger looking for likely victims. When he found them, he convinced either children or the mothers of children to take photos of themselves performing sex acts. In exchange for the photos, he would send them money, Schiller said.
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“He violated girls or the mothers of small children half-way around the world, communicating to each of them to have them to produce child pornography,” Schiller wrote. “And if that was not enough, he engaged with others to share child pornography, trading them as if they were baseball cards.”
Citing Pollard’s failing health and his age, Assistant Federal Public Defender Scott Berry asked U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg to sentence Pollard to 10 years in prison. Berry said Pollard never physically touched or attempted to touch a child.
But, Schiller countered, the damage he caused was significant.
“While he never ‘physically threatened or extorted them’ or ‘touched or attempted to touch them,’ Pollard did everything he could to take their innocence,” he wrote.
Banned from Facebook in 2016 after the social media company discovered Pollard had solicited hundreds of youngsters to produce child pornography, he resurfaced on the platform in May 2020.
Acting on a tip Facebook sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, police launched an investigation.
Pollard was indicted in July on five charges of production, possession and distribution of child pornography. He was also charged with attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity, which is punishable by life in prison. He pleaded guilty to five of the most serious charges in September.
Both Berry and Schiller agreed that Pollard would likely die in prison.
“Unfortunately for us all, death is a part of life,” Schiller wrote. “When a criminal commits heinous offenses during his later years, it may mean that death will come while in prison.”
jmusgrave@pbpost.com
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Former Palm Beach County schools employee guilty in child-porn scheme
