South Barrington man held on $250K bail in child porn case
A South Barrington man who authorities identified as a convicted sex offender was ordered held on a $250,000 cash bail Friday after prosecutors said police recovered thousands of files containing child pornography from his phone.
Vincent Salvaggio, 55, is charged with solicitation, dissemination and possession of child pornography and violation of the sex offender registry law by failing to disclose his internet communication identities and IP addresses.
Salvaggio must pay the full $250,000 to be released from custody. If he does post bail, he will be on house arrest. His next court date is June 17.
Prosecutors say the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a report from a social media site indicating that on Oct. 4, 2020, a user, later identified as Salvaggio, shared two files containing images of child sexual abuse.
The Illinois Attorney General Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force linked that report to the defendant's phone number and home, said Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Dominica Puglise. The attorney general's office also determined the user was a registered sex offender, Puglise said.
The office transferred the case last December to the Cook County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
After sheriff's investigators obtained a search warrant for the social media account, they recovered two additional files of child pornography, Puglise said.
On Tuesday, officers went to Salvaggio's home, where they read him his Miranda rights, questioned him and asked to look at his phone. According to Puglise, he consented and "admitted to having files that investigators would not like in his photo album."
Investigators found apps for a cross-platform instant messaging service and for a cloud storage and file hosting service on his phone. After obtaining search warrants for Salvaggio's phone and cloud storage account, officers discovered he not only possessed but also disseminated child pornography to other users, Puglise said. She said they recovered more than two terabytes of content in the accounts, which is the equivalent of about 1,000 hours of HD video or 500,000 images of children younger than 13 engaged in sexual acts and poses.
Investigators are still reviewing the files, she said.
Prosecutors say Salvaggio was convicted in 2010 of sexually abusing a teenage girl in another state, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.