A former federal employee was sentenced to eight years in prison after repeatedly connecting his cellphone to the internet inside the Library of Congress to view and download child pornography, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Gary Peksa, who was working as a sheet metal mechanic for the Architect of the Capitol at the Library of Congress, pleaded guilty after being arrested in October 2019 on one charge of receipt of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia. Peksa, 56, will be placed on 20 years of supervised release after the time spent behind bars and will be required to register as a sex offender for 15 years.
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Peksa, who hails from Maryland, was arrested on Oct. 21, 2019, after it was discovered by the library’s network security operations center that someone had been using its public wireless network to view child pornography on various dates between Oct. 11, 2018, and July 29, 2019, according to officials. Investigators later linked this conduct to Peksa, and Capitol Police seized his cellphone and laptop in July 2019.
The former mechanic’s cellphone contained 199 images showing young children exposing their genitals or engaging in sexual activity, and his laptop had 215 files depicting young girls being sexually abused or assaulted, according to court filings. Peksa accessed these files in several areas throughout the Library of Congress, including a bathroom, his office, and a break room.
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Peksa also used his laptop and cellphone to access similar materials on his home internet, DOJ said. As part of his sentence, Peksa must pay $47,000 in restitution to the victims depicted in the pornographic materials.
