A New Jersey man has been sentenced to four years in prison in connection with his involvement with online groups that created and distributed videos depicting sadistic acts of extreme violence and sexual abuse against monkeys.
Giancarlo Morelli, of Wharton, New Jersey, received the 48-month sentence on Sept. 30 for conspiring to create and distribute so-called “animal crush” videos that agents have described as “beyond disturbing.”
“If you pay others to torture animals or to share images of that horrific abuse, you can expect to be held accountable as if you committed the torture firsthand,” Dominick Gerace II, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said in announcing the sentence.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, court documents detail how in nearly 20 instances, Morelli paid someone for videos depicting torture and abuse of monkeys. He also maintained prolonged correspondence with the person supplying the videos, the department said, offering feedback about their content and offering suggestions for future videos.
“Congress has said clearly that this conduct has no place in our society,” said Adam Gustafson, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Beyond dark corners of the web, it is reviled.”
Creation and distribution of media showing such torture was illegalized by the Animal Crush Prohibition Act of 2010, and the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act of 2019 made such acts a federal crime.
Gustafson encouraged anyone viewing such contact to report perpetrators to federal law enforcement and urged those involved in such chat groups to withdraw and seek help.
Adam Lawson, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office, called the acts of torture and abuse of young monkeys “beyond disturbing.”
According to statements of facts signed by Morelli, the videos included depictions of baby and adolescent monkeys being tortured.
Following Morelli’s guilty plea in January, 11 other people across the U.S. were indicted in May on federal charges in relation to the case, accused of paying 28-year-old Nicholas Tyler Dryden of Cincinnati to create the videos showing monkeys being tortured and mutilated.
The indictment said that after collecting payment, Dryden then paid a teen in Indonesia to carry out the torture and abuse on camera. Dryden entered a guilty plea in federal court earlier this year on charges of conspiring to create and distribute animal crush videos.
The FBI and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the case.
“Those who produce or distribute animal crush videos should know that federal law enforcement is fully committed to identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting these offenders,” said Doug Ault, assistant director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement.
USA TODAY network reporters Kevin Grasha and Ryan Murphy contibuted to this report.
