A man tasked with guiding ex-cons to lead positive and fulfilling lives has been convicted of sexually exploiting a child.
“I want nudes… And for u to talk like Daddy’s dirty (expletive) ok?” the user “Gianninyny” asked a 13-year-old Texas girl over the privatized smartphone messaging app Kik on May 20, 2018, according to a federal court affidavit.
“Gianninyny” turned out to be now-49-year-old Brian Orlandella of Beverly, who happened to be the assistant chief probation officer for Lynn District Court during the time he was asking the 13-year-old to do explicit sexual things this newspaper will not detail.
After a six-day trial, a federal jury in Boston found Orlandella guilty of one count of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of transfer of obscene material to a minor. U.S. Senior District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf scheduled sentencing for Aug. 5.
In addition to asking for — and receiving — lewd videos and photographs from the girl, Orlandella sent the child multiple videos of him masturbating and other videos and pictures of his penis, according to court documents.
On May 19, Orlandella explicitly asked the girl her age — she lies a little and says she’s 14, but that’s still underage — but the explicit messaging continues, evidence in court documents shows.
By May 21, the girl’s mother finds out “that adult male users were requesting photos of her” doing very sexual things, according to the affidavit, and she alerts her local Texas police department. The mother granted the police permission to search her daughter’s phone, the feds say, which revealed the “Gianninyny” conversations.
Kik was subpoenaed in June 2018 — the Canadian company has issued a guide for law enforcement — and provided the police with information related to the account, including the IP address log. That log showed both a Verizon wireless account and a Comcast account accessing the service. A further subpoena to Comcast pointed investigators straight to Orlandella’s Central Street apartment.
Investigators say they recognized photos of Orlandella from his wife’s publicly accessible social media accounts and they executed a search warrant at his apartment early the morning of Dec. 3, 2018, according to court records. There, investigators seized two of his phones, which contained evidence of his Kik account. The feds say he then copped to being the person in the Kik videos.
Orlandella faces a minimum sentence of 15 and up to 30 years in prison, followed by up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 for the sexual exploitation of a child charge. The charge of transfer of obscene material to a minor could add up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $150,000.
