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More Victims Found In Ex-DCF Spokesman's Child Porn Case
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Published: October 15, 2008
Updated: 10/15/2008 02:46 pm
Al Zimmerman
TAMPA - Authorities have found more victims of a former state Department of Children & Families spokesman who was jailed on child porn charges, a federal prosecutor said this morning.
Al Zimmerman was arrested in February and is accused in a federal complaint of making sexually explicit photos and videos of two boys who were 16 at the time.
The list of victims has now grown to six or seven, Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen Murphy-Davis told U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew during a status conference in the case this morning.
The state has paid $500,000 in a legal settlement with one of the original victims, said Erin Geraghty, the current spokeswoman for DCF. The payment to a boy Zimmerman met through his job is to go for counseling and therapy until the youth reaches the age of 40, Geraghty said.
Murphy-Davis said she expects a new indictment to be handed up this week, adding three charges: receiving child pornography, possessing child pornography and obstruction of justice. The new indictment will encompass all of the six or seven known victims, Murphy-Davis said.
The prosecutor did not elaborate and would not comment further after the hearing.
Zimmerman's attorney, Timothy Fitzgerald, also had no comment.
Zimmerman, who is jailed without bail pending his trial, was not present for the brief court hearing.
Bucklew set another status conference for Nov. 12.
Murphy-Davis has said Zimmerman often corresponded by e-mail with the two victims identified earlier using his work computer. Zimmerman told authorities he didn't know the boys were underage, Murphy-Davis, said during a bail earlier this year.
Zimmerman used a fake name when e-mailing the boys, she said, and told the boys he would sell the pictures and "make money for him and them."
Investigators say the incidents took place in 2006 and 2007, and that Zimmerman paid both juveniles for the pictures in cash or by money order. Zimmerman sent an e-mail to one of the boys and discussed the production of child pornography, payment and how the photographs would be brokered in Germany, authorities said.
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