BOSTON — A former Lynn District Court Assistant Chief Probation Officer Court was sentenced to 17 years in prison Friday in connection with child exploitation offenses, the US Attorney’s office for Massachusetts said.
Brian Orlandella, 49, of Beverly, was convicted on April 20 following a six-day jury trial of one count of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of transfer of obscene material to a minor.
Orlandella was arrested in December 2018 and indicted by a grand jury a month later, after a a mother in Texas told authorities in May 2018 that she had found messages between her 13-year-old daughter and a man later identified as Orlandella on the messaging app Kik.
In the messages, Orlandella “directed” the girl, who told him she was 14, to send him explicit photos of herself. Orlandella acknowledged that he was “much older” than the girl in the messages, the statement said.
Authorities traced the Kik account’s IP address to Orlandella’s Massachusetts address, and seized two of his phones in a search of his residence, the statement said. One of the phones contained evidence tying Orlandella to the Kik account, and during an interview with authorities he admitted to using Kik and acknowledged he was the person depicted in obscene videos recovered from the child’s phone.
U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said that Orlandella’s actions are particularly egregious given the fact that Orlandella presented himself as a trusted law enforcement officer.
“Orlandella took advantage of a vulnerable, 13-year-old girl – he sent sexually explicit material to her and coerced her into producing obscene content through an anonymous social media profile. In his day-to-day life, Orlandella held himself out to be a trusted member of the law enforcement community, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth,” Rollins said. “The sexual exploitation of children is an offense that will never be tolerated in my office. We are committed to working with our law enforcement partners to prosecute predators and bring treatment, services and justice to our victims.”
