By Michele Morgan Bolton
The Times Union (Albany, New York)
Copyright 2006 The Hearst Corporation
ALBANY, N.Y. — A paramedic, firefighter and college instructor who lived a double life dealing in explicit and sometimes violent child pornography was sentenced Monday to more than six years in federal prison.
Eric Gandler, 28, of 202 London Square Drive in Clifton Park, was sentenced to 78 months and also was ordered to have no unsupervised contact with minors, to participate in a sex-offender program and to sign up with the state Sex Offender Registry. Home computer equipment he used to trade and swap images with others was forfeited to the federal government.
Gandler pleaded guilty on June 2, 2005. At the time, he admitted that sometime between June and August 2004 he established a file server on his home computer in an Internet relay chat room, operated out of his home.
Using special software, Gandler set his computer to automatically respond to upload or download requests for computer images by others, federal officials said.
The file server collected and advertised hundreds of images of prepubescent children engaged in sexual and sadistic and masochistic activities.
Gandler signed on his computer under the name “Spankgirl” in a chat room titled “100 percent Pre-teenGirlSexPics.” Undercover agents with the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security say they caught Gandler collecting and distributing child pornography on at least two occasions over the Internet in 2004.
Gandler worked as an EMS instructor at Hudson Valley Community College. He served on the board of the Waterford Rescue Squad and was about to attend law school. He was a former award-winning volunteer at the Jonesville Fire Department and a Ballston Lake EMS paramedic.