A 48-year-old colonel in the Air Force pleaded guilty Friday to receiving child pornography, the Justice Department said, and admitted to taking photographs of young girls apparently without their consent.
In his plea agreement with the Justice Department, Col. Mark Visconi of Fairfax, Virginia, admitted to receiving and attempting to receive child pornography over the Internet between November 2015 and June 2016. The department’s news release said Visconi used an online bulletin board, operating on the anonymous TOR network, to download and view numerous such images and videos.
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Visconi also took hundreds of pictures, with his cell phone, of minor girls’ clothed buttocks, the plea deal said. Some of those photos appeared to be “upskirt” images, Justice said, and it does not appear the girls were aware he was photographing them.
Visconi is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 31, 2020, the release said.
According to a 2007 news release after Visconi received an award for airmanship, he is a special operations instructor pilot and Arabic linguist who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1993. Then-Maj. Visconsi received the Col. James Jabara Award for Airmanship after he flew 106 combat sorties to support Operation Iraqi Freedom while training Iraqi air force members to conduct counter-insurgency missions.
Visconi’s most recent duty title has been chief of the Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force at Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon, according to information released by the Air Force Personnel Center.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation into Visconi, according to the justice Department. Attorney Gwendelynn Bills of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of Justice’s Criminal Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Whitney Russell of the Eastern District of Virginia are prosecuting the case.
The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski of Justice’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia, Special Agent in Charge Marc Meyer of the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, and Special Agent In Charge Raymond Villanueva of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations in Washington D.C. The case was brought as part of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide effort to fight child sexual exploitation and abuse since its launch in May 2006.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
