The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services kept its acting cyber security director on the government payroll for an astonishing eight months while he was in federal custody with child pornography charges  pending against him, MailOnline has learned. Timothy DeFoggi was convicted Tuesday of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiring to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessing a computer with the intent to view child pornography. He will be sentenced in November. A federal grand jury indicted him on March 20, 2013. Eight months of pretrial motions followed before a trial date was set; court records show he was in federal custody by April 9 of last year. That wasn't enough to strip him of his sensitive job in the Obama administration. Sick: Timothy DeFoggi, a former acting director of cyber security for the U.S. Department of health and Human services, was convicted Tuesday on federal child pornography charges. He remained on HHS's payroll for nine months while charges pended against him . An HHS spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that DeFoggi joined the agency in September 2008, working in its Indian Health Service as a Supervisory IT Specialist. In March 2012 he was promoted to Lead IT Specialist in the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration, a job he held until January 2014. The Department of Justice said Tuesday in a statement that he was considered HHS's 'acting director of cyber security,' a role that gave him access to the inner workings of thousands of computers engaged in government work. DeFoggi's name appears on an HHS organizational chart in a planning document related to the agency's fiscal year 2014 budget request. The document describes him as being in charge of 'OS [operating system] IT Security Operations,' reporting directly to HHS Chief Information Security Officer Kevin Charest. The federal court docket in DeFoggi's criminal case shows that he petitioned the court for bail in July 2013, three months after he was remanded into custody, proposing home detention in a New Mexico house he owned. A federal magistrate judge denied the request four weeks later. His promotion at HHS came in the same month he registered on an underground website catering to pedophiles, according to federal prosecutors. He remained a member until December 2012, when federal investigators shut the site down. The HHS spokesman would not comment on why DeFoggi was employed for months while he was under indictment, and he had no response to questions about whether he was fired or allowed to retire. He also declined to say how much he was paid during that time and whether he will have to return the money. He referred MailOnline to the Justice Department, which did not respond to a request for comment. A Nebraska jury handed down seven separate guilty verdicts against DeFoggi on Tuesday, following a four-day trial in connection with child pornography websites operated by Aaron McGrath, who is serving a 20-year prison term. This chart, from the HHS fiscal 2014 'Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees' related to the 'Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund,' shows that during 2013 Timothy DeFoggi was in charge of operating-system security on all of HHS computers . Court records show that while DeFoggi was a resident of the Washington, D.C. bedroom community of Germantown, Maryland, he used the screen aliases 'F***Christ' and 'PTa**eater' to communicate with other people and trade images of children engaged in sexual conduct. The name of the website was often redacted from court filings, and MailOnline has opted not to print it. But federal prosecutors mentioned DeFoggi's screen names often in court. 'Through the website,' the Justice Department said Tuesday, 'DeFoggi accessed child pornography, solicited child pornography from other members, and exchanged private messages with other members where he expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children.' 'DeFoggi even suggested meeting one member in person,' the DOJ statement added, 'to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and murder children.' The grand jury's description of the crimes in their indictment was so graphic that a judge agreed to order the redaction – the blacking out – of entire pages on the government's publicly accessible computer servers. In one court filing, his lawyer conceded that 'In the "About Me" section of username "f***christ's" profile on "Website A," it says: "Have many perversions. Contact me for fantasy chat." The attorney argued, unsuccessfully, that DeFoggi and his co-defendant, Zackary Austin, were engaging in harmless online fantasies. Kevin Charest (top C), chief information security officer for the Department of Health and Human Services Department, was DeFoggi's boss at HHS . Trouble: Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the newly minted HHS secretary, now has a new PR headache to add to her already heaving pile of Obamacare woes . McGrath, a Nebraska native, ran a trio of child-porn websites through TOR, 'the onion router,' an open network within the Internet that allows users to hide from network surveillance and surf online without leaving digital footprints. The FBI deployed a custom-made software program in a 2012 investigation it dubbed 'Operation Torpedo,' scouring every so-called '.onion' website it could find and determining which of them were related to illegal activity. McGrath operated two of his sites on the network server 'farm' where he worked by day, and operated a third from his home computer. Federal investigators found that he had left his administrator password blank on one of the child pornography sites. They quickly began collecting information that could identify the computers that were accessing it. One of the sites was a child-porn Facebook knockoff frequented by DeFoggi, 56, and another two dozen defendants the government identified. Other defendants snared by Operation Torpedo are named in court documents as Kirk Cottom, Vincent Diberardino, Jason Flanary, Michael Huyck, Brandon Moore, David William Peer, Russell Glenn Pierce, Kevin Pitman, Gary Reibert, John Sebes, Thomas Spencer and Joshua Welch. The FBI said Tuesday that DeFoggi was the sixth to be successfully prosecuted. When he ordered DeFoggi held without bail in  2013, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas D. Thalken noted that he appeared 'to have a mental condition which may affect whether the defendant will appear' if he were given bond. Attorney General Eric Holder helms the Justice Department, which announced DeFoggi's conviction on Tuesday in a four-day trial that involved seven criminal counts, all related to child pornography . It's not clear what that condition is, or whether it will have an impact on sentencing. John S. Berry Jr. and Justin B. Kalemkiarian, his two current attorneys in Lincoln, Nebraska, did not respond to requests for comment.
Timothy DeFoggi was found guilty Tuesday on seven child-porn criminal charges .
He was formerly the acting director of cyber security at the US Department of Health and Human Services .
DeFoggi was indicted in March 2013 and jailed a month later but HHS confirms that he was employed as a Lead IT Specialist until January 2014 .
Justice Dept says he 'accessed' and 'solicited child pornography ... [and] expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children'
DeFoggi 'even suggested meeting one member in person,' according to the DOJ, 'to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and murder children'
His screen names on an underground pedophile website included 'F***Christ' and 'PTa**eater'
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services kept its acting cyber security director on the government payroll for an astonishing eight months while he was in federal custody with child pornography charges  pending against him, MailOnline has learned. Timothy DeFoggi was convicted Tuesday of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiring to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessing a computer with the intent to view child pornography. He will be sentenced in November. A federal grand jury indicted him on March 20, 2013. Eight months of pretrial motions followed before a trial date was set; court records show he was in federal custody by April 9 of last year. That wasn't enough to strip him of his sensitive job in the Obama administration. Sick: Timothy DeFoggi, a former acting director of cyber security for the U.S. Department of health and Human services, was convicted Tuesday on federal child pornography charges. He remained on HHS's payroll for nine months while charges pended against him . An HHS spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that DeFoggi joined the agency in September 2008, working in its Indian Health Service as a Supervisory IT Specialist. In March 2012 he was promoted to Lead IT Specialist in the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration, a job he held until January 2014. The Department of Justice said Tuesday in a statement that he was considered HHS's 'acting director of cyber security,' a role that gave him access to the inner workings of thousands of computers engaged in government work. DeFoggi's name appears on an HHS organizational chart in a planning document related to the agency's fiscal year 2014 budget request. The document describes him as being in charge of 'OS [operating system] IT Security Operations,' reporting directly to HHS Chief Information Security Officer Kevin Charest. The federal court docket in DeFoggi's criminal case shows that he petitioned the court for bail in July 2013, three months after he was remanded into custody, proposing home detention in a New Mexico house he owned. A federal magistrate judge denied the request four weeks later. His promotion at HHS came in the same month he registered on an underground website catering to pedophiles, according to federal prosecutors. He remained a member until December 2012, when federal investigators shut the site down. The HHS spokesman would not comment on why DeFoggi was employed for months while he was under indictment, and he had no response to questions about whether he was fired or allowed to retire. He also declined to say how much he was paid during that time and whether he will have to return the money. He referred MailOnline to the Justice Department, which did not respond to a request for comment. A Nebraska jury handed down seven separate guilty verdicts against DeFoggi on Tuesday, following a four-day trial in connection with child pornography websites operated by Aaron McGrath, who is serving a 20-year prison term. This chart, from the HHS fiscal 2014 'Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees' related to the 'Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund,' shows that during 2013 Timothy DeFoggi was in charge of operating-system security on all of HHS computers . Court records show that while DeFoggi was a resident of the Washington, D.C. bedroom community of Germantown, Maryland, he used the screen aliases 'F***Christ' and 'PTa**eater' to communicate with other people and trade images of children engaged in sexual conduct. The name of the website was often redacted from court filings, and MailOnline has opted not to print it. But federal prosecutors mentioned DeFoggi's screen names often in court. 'Through the website,' the Justice Department said Tuesday, 'DeFoggi accessed child pornography, solicited child pornography from other members, and exchanged private messages with other members where he expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children.' 'DeFoggi even suggested meeting one member in person,' the DOJ statement added, 'to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and murder children.' The grand jury's description of the crimes in their indictment was so graphic that a judge agreed to order the redaction – the blacking out – of entire pages on the government's publicly accessible computer servers. In one court filing, his lawyer conceded that 'In the "About Me" section of username "f***christ's" profile on "Website A," it says: "Have many perversions. Contact me for fantasy chat." The attorney argued, unsuccessfully, that DeFoggi and his co-defendant, Zackary Austin, were engaging in harmless online fantasies. Kevin Charest (top C), chief information security officer for the Department of Health and Human Services Department, was DeFoggi's boss at HHS . Trouble: Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the newly minted HHS secretary, now has a new PR headache to add to her already heaving pile of Obamacare woes . McGrath, a Nebraska native, ran a trio of child-porn websites through TOR, 'the onion router,' an open network within the Internet that allows users to hide from network surveillance and surf online without leaving digital footprints. The FBI deployed a custom-made software program in a 2012 investigation it dubbed 'Operation Torpedo,' scouring every so-called '.onion' website it could find and determining which of them were related to illegal activity. McGrath operated two of his sites on the network server 'farm' where he worked by day, and operated a third from his home computer. Federal investigators found that he had left his administrator password blank on one of the child pornography sites. They quickly began collecting information that could identify the computers that were accessing it. One of the sites was a child-porn Facebook knockoff frequented by DeFoggi, 56, and another two dozen defendants the government identified. Other defendants snared by Operation Torpedo are named in court documents as Kirk Cottom, Vincent Diberardino, Jason Flanary, Michael Huyck, Brandon Moore, David William Peer, Russell Glenn Pierce, Kevin Pitman, Gary Reibert, John Sebes, Thomas Spencer and Joshua Welch. The FBI said Tuesday that DeFoggi was the sixth to be successfully prosecuted. When he ordered DeFoggi held without bail in  2013, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas D. Thalken noted that he appeared 'to have a mental condition which may affect whether the defendant will appear' if he were given bond. Attorney General Eric Holder helms the Justice Department, which announced DeFoggi's conviction on Tuesday in a four-day trial that involved seven criminal counts, all related to child pornography . It's not clear what that condition is, or whether it will have an impact on sentencing. John S. Berry Jr. and Justin B. Kalemkiarian, his two current attorneys in Lincoln, Nebraska, did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of cyber security for the U.S. Department of on federal child pornography charges. He remained Service as a Supervisory IT Specialist. In March Administration, a job he held until January 2014. later. His promotion at HHS came in the same month he registered on an underground website DeFoggi was employed for months while he was that during 2013 Timothy DeFoggi was in charge of the screen aliases 'F***Christ' and said Tuesday, 'DeFoggi accessed child pornography, solicited child pornography from with other members where he expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children.' 'DeFoggi even suggested meeting one member in person,' the DOJ statement added, 'to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and