A one-time assistant professor at George Mason University has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for collecting hundreds of child pornography photos and videos, including from at least two people he coerced, U.S. prosecutors announced yesterday (Thursday).
Daniel Marc Lofaro, a 40-year-old Fairfax resident, was sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge in Alexandria on Wednesday (July 24) after pleading guilty to coercion and entitlement and receiving, distributing and possessing child pornography.
According to court documents, a grand jury indicted Lofaro on the child porn charges on Oct. 5, 2023 after federal and naval law enforcement agents found approximately 600 images and videos of child sexual abuse on an iPhone and laptops recovered from his home.
The coercion charge was added in a subsequent indictment on Dec. 7, 2023 after investigators determined that Lofaro had discussed sexual acts with a 12-year-old and asked her to send explicit photos on Snapchat in November 2021.
“Lofaro told the victim in graphic detail how he would have sex with the victim and continued to entice and exploit the child even when the victim hardly responded,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a press release. “Lofaro requested nude images of the victim and asked the victim to join him in video chats.”
Lofaro also contacted a 14-year-old through an online dating app in 2019 who he then talked to through other social media and messaging apps as well as phone and video calls, according to prosecutors:
On multiple occasions, Lofaro asked the victim to send him sexually explicit pictures and videos. At Lofaro’s request, in February 2022, the victim created a sexually explicit video and sent it to Lofaro. Minor 2 told law enforcement that Lofaro asked for the victim’s address so he could visit the victim, and that the victim stopped talking to the defendant because he was asking the victim to send him photographs every day, even when the child was at school.
The FBI began investigating Lofaro in 2021 after connecting him to an individual in Ohio who was suspected of trafficking in child pornography, according to a pre-trial hearing transcript. Lofaro and the other individual had allegedly chatted and exchanged sexual abuse materials through the messaging app Kik.
FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) executed a search warrant at Lofaro’s home in Fairfax on May 18, 2022 — the same day he last contacted the 14-year-old, prosecutors said.
NCIS, the Navy’s law enforcement agency, got involved because at the time, Lofaro was a civilian research scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Lofaro had collected child porn materials dating back to 2014, and from August 2021 through February 2022, he shared and received “numerous” files through groups on social media “dedicated to discussing sexual abuse of children and exchanging [child sexual abuse material.”
Lofaro signed a plea agreement in April where he admitted that he was “in fact guilty of the charged offenses” and his guilt could be proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt. He could’ve faced a life sentence for the coercion charge and a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the child porn charges.
Though GMU’s Institute for Digital Innovation still lists Lofaro as an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computing in its faculty directory, a GMU spokesperson says he hasn’t worked at the university since 2021.
Screenshot via Google Maps
