PDF: Salles indictment
A North Georgia man who could receive up to 18 years in prison for child pornography crimes wanted to plan a party for which attendees would have been required to bring small boys for admittance, an undercover police detective testified Monday.
Gary E. Salles also claimed to know a man called "Axel" who had three young sons whom the father had trained to act in child pornographic movies, according to testimony by the detective who originally sought to arrest Mr. Salles a year ago for drug dealing.
"I did not know about the child porn until we started chatting online," Winchester, Tenn., detective Chris Lane testified in court Monday, recalling how Mr. Salles had wanted to deliver a young boy to him for $10,000 when they arrested him at a Winchester motel in January 2009.
Those and other details emerged Monday in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga, even as Mr. Salles' defense attorney tried to paint him as the typical case of a man who had been busted with child pornography images on his computer.
Defense attorney Mary Ellen Coleman protested the government's claim that authorities had found more than 14,000 images of child pornography on his computer, calling all but about 1,000 of them "copies" that had resulted from routine file backups.
Regardless of the number of images, Mr. Salles pleaded guilty last May to transporting child pornography across state lines and trying to sell $2,000 worth of methamphetamine. He had expected to receive his prison sentence at Monday's court hearing.
Ms. Coleman, however, asked after the almost two-hour proceeding that the sentencing be postponed a week to allow U.S. District Judge Harry S. "Sandy" Mattice more time to review recorded phone conversations between Mr. Salles and Mr. Lane.
Mr. Salles now is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 16.
Prosecutors took strong issue with the defense's more-innocent characterization of Mr. Salles, a former IBM employee who had vast knowledge of computers and who they claim took methodical steps to back up his files on a routine basis to make sure the child porn images would be there when child predators came calling.
"(Mr. Salles) was diligent" in his actions, argued Assistant U.S. Attorney Mel Schwing. "It showed a certain kind of mindset."
Detective Lane also testified that Mr. Salles claimed the Web site called "bois4men.com" as his own, bragging that he easily could upload and take down pornographic images to accommodate customers while simultaneously eluding police.