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Popular gay porn star Austin Wolf was arrested Friday on charges of sending and receiving hundreds of child pornography videos from his Manhattan apartment.
Authorities said Justin Heath Smith, 43, who goes by the stage name Austin Wolf, exchanged horrifying videos, including one showing a 10-year-old child being bound and raped, with the anonymous target of an FBI investigation on the encrypted app Telegram.
Undercover FBI agents then used the person’s Telegram account to chat with Smith and verify his identity, according to court documents.
According to the complaint, federal agents searched Smith’s Manhattan apartment in April and found approximately 200 videos containing child pornography on SD cards in the adult film star’s computer lab.
Smith, wearing a skin-tight gray shirt and blue jeans, was ordered held without bail during a hearing in Manhattan federal court Friday afternoon.
Prosecutor Getzel Burger described him as “a danger to children online, a danger to children offline and a danger to children everywhere.”
Smith’s lawyer, Michael Baldassarre, had asked U.S. District Judge Robin F. Tarnowski to order Smith, who has no criminal history, to be placed under 24-hour house arrest and GPS monitoring.
His lawyers urged the judge not to send Smith to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which has been on lockdown 23 hours a day since the stabbing death of an inmate earlier this month.
Baldassarre argued that his proposed regulations would make Smith’s apartment an “MDC,” but that he would be “allowed to eat and shower, but not killed” and would not have a maggot-filled cell.
But Judge Tarnowski called the allegations “deeply disturbing” and told the court that releasing Smith “would not provide a reasonable assurance of community safety”.
Smith is charged with one count each of distribution and receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.
If convicted of the main charge, he faces a minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years.
As federal marshals escorted Smith from the courtroom, he turned to his partner of 10 years, who was sitting in the courtroom gallery, and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”
He is scheduled to appear in court again on July 29 for an initial hearing.
