Bay Area engineer sentenced to nearly 5 years on child pornography charge

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Silicon Valley engineer who possessed one of the largest child pornography collections ever uncovered in the Bay Area has been sentenced to 59 months in federal prison, following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.

Paul Lawrence Vella, 60, of Morgan Hill, was sentenced Jan. 15 to 59 months in prison for possession of child pornography. The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila. In addition to the prison term, Judge Davila also sentenced the defendant to a seven-year period of supervised release, ordered him to register as a sex offender and participate in a sex offender treatment program, and pay $29,500 in restitution

Vella pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography late last year. In pleading guilty, he admitted using his computer to download child pornography through a peer-to-peer network and saving those images on hard drives, discs and other digital medium. Vella also admitted he knowingly possessed over 600 images of child pornography, including images of prepubescent minors and images portraying sadistic or masochistic conduct. Vella further admitted that law enforcement had identified more than 86,000 images and 2,100 videos of child pornography in his possession. From the images and videos in Vella’s possession, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children identified 915 known child victims.
 
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Fazioli and Daniel Kaleba prosecuted the case with the assistance of Laurie Worthen.