Another “Welcome To Video” User Sentenced to Prison
A Pittsburgh man was sentenced to 90 months in prison for accessing child sexual abuse material from the Welcome To Video darkweb child pornography site.
According to court records Anthony Bellisario, 58, a Pittsburgh resident, was imprisoned after he admitted that he downloaded and uploaded child sexual abuse material to the now-defunct Welcome To Video dark web child pornography website.
The case that resulted in Bellisario’s sentencing resulted from an international investigation that took down Welcome To Video following the arrest of the site’s admin in South Korea on March 5, 2018. The investigating authorities seized the site’s servers and acquired data that led to the identification of hundreds of the site’s users from all over the world.
In the cause of analysis of the seized data the investigators established that from January 21, 2017, to at least February 27, 2018, Bellisario downloaded more than 1,600 child sexual abuse material files from the website. He also uploaded six files of child abuse material to the Website and as a result, gained free access to child sexual abuse material files available for sale on the site.
The investigators executed a search warrant on Bellisario’s residence on March 27, 2018. The search resulted in the seizure of two laptops that belonged to Bellisario. The investigators found 1,000 unique videos and 443 unique images of child sexual abuse material, as well as 769 unique videos and 9,340 unique images of child erotica on the laptops.
Bellisario pleaded guilty to two charges of child exploitation on August 18, 2020. United States District Judge Robert J. Colville sentenced him to seven years and six months in federal prison on October 12, 2021.