Bristol County man sentenced to jail time after over 400 disturbing images involving young children discovered

A 52-year-old Bristol County man was convicted last Friday of possessing and disseminating child pornography, and was sentenced to jail time, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III announced.

Brian Mello of Norton pled guilty to indictments charging him with two counts of Disseminating Material of a Child in a Sexual Act, one count of Possession of Child Pornography and one count of Disseminating Material of a Child in the Nude.

In January 2020, the Massachusetts State Police Cyber Crimes Unit received two cybertip reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding child pornography that was uploaded to MeWe.com, a social media website. According to those reports, on August 19, 2019, a user named “Dorian Gray” logged in using a specific phone number and uploaded 61 child pornographic files. Additionally, on November 22, 2019, “Dorian Gray” logged in again and uploaded six child pornographic files to the website. On this date, “Dorian Gray” logged into the website using a specific e-mail address. The uploaded images depicted naked prepubescent girls, as young as 3-5 years old, exposing their genitalia and/or engaging in sexual activity.

A trooper assigned to the specialized unit investigated and determined this defendant was “Dorian Gray.” On July 30, 2020, the trooper executed a search warrant at the defendant’s East Hodges Street residence. During a recorded interview, Mello admitted that the email address and phone numbers involved were his. He admitted to having accounts on Tumblr and MeWe.com under the name “Dorian Gray.” He also admitted to using MeWe for sharing and receiving child pornographic files from other users on MeWe.com. He also admitted to directly messaging other people on Tumblr to transmit child pornography.

Investigators seized Mello’s Samsung phone, which had 442 child pornographic files that were stored in a secret vault application.

During a sentencing hearing last Friday in Fall River Superior Court, Assistant District Attorney Jose Vazquez argued Mello should receive a two-and-a-half year to four-year state prison sentence, followed by three years of supervised probation with special conditions. The defense requested a three-year probationary term with no prison or jail time. Judge Raffi Yessayan sentenced Mello to two-and-a-half years at the Bristol County House of Corrections, with 18 months to serve and the balance of the sentence suspended for three years. If Mello were to commit any new crimes during this time, he would be liable to serve out the remainder of the jail sentence. The judge also added an additional three years of supervised probation to Mello’s sentence. The probationary term will begin when Mello concludes serving jail time. His conditions include not having any unsupervised contact with children under 16, continuing sex offender counseling, registering as a sex offender, providing a DNA sample, and registering his electronic devices with the Probation Department and subjecting them to random monitoring.