A Tolland doctor who officials said had thousands of files of child porn on his home computer has been sentenced to more than four years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography.
Carl G. Koplin, a 55-year-old former family practice physician in Vernon, was sentenced on Tuesday to 51 in prison, followed by fives years of supervised release. He will also have to pay a $10,000 fine.
According to court documents and statements made in court, a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent based in Virginia used a publicly available Internet file sharing program to download approximately 300 images and videos of child pornography from the shared directories of a user with an Internet Protocol address belonging to Koplin’s Tolland home.
On July 9, 2010, federal agents searched Koplin’s house and seized a desktop computer, storage media and other computer components and Koplin admitted that he used a file sharing program to trade images of child pornography and that he was responsible for any child pornography found as a result of the search of his residence, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
“This defendant’s appalling collection of child pornography was one of the largest that we have seen here in Connecticut,” U.S. Attorney David Fein said in a statement. “It’s reprehensible that a practicing physician who held such an important position of trust in the community victimized so many children by collecting and trading sexually explicit images of them. This Office is committing to working with the FBI, Connecticut Child Exploitation Task Force and our other law enforcement partners to protect children by stemming the distribution of these images and vigorously prosecuting offenders.”
According to officials, Koplin had thousands of images and videos depicting child pornography, totaling more than 800 gigabytes in size.
Officials said Koplin was a family practice physician in Vernon before his arrest.
He has been in home confinement under electronic monitoring since being arrested.