A North County man who worked as a teachers aide, substitute teacher and youth hockey coach was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 16 years in federal prison for his role in a scheme to trick minors into sending sexually explicit material of themselves to him and two co-conspirators.
Daniel Dasko, of Carlsbad, was arrested last year after federal authorities said he worked with two people, one of whom was a Philadelphia-area teacher, to solicit child pornography from minor victims.
That teacher, Andrew Wolf, was sentenced earlier this year to nearly 39 years in prison, while another defendant, Kray Strange of Carthage, New York, was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors said the other two men worked to “catfish” victims by posing as teenage girls online. In a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors, they wrote that several of the minor victims were targeted “because Dasko provided their names and publicly available online information.”
Dasko’s defense attorney, Marcus Bourassa, wrote in a sentencing memorandum that his client’s conduct differed from the other two defendants, who “were operating on a different scale” by directly baiting victims in the catfishing scheme.
Bourassa, who sought a seven-year sentence for Dasko, also said his client accepted responsibility early by immediately seeking sex offender treatment from the outset of the case.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez, Dasko wrote that while he “earnestly loved teaching and coaching,” he could not “fault anyone who is disgusted with my career choices in light of my crimes here. I share their disgust with myself.”
Dasko pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of distribution of child pornography.
At his sentencing hearing, Dasko read a letter he’d authored to the victims, in which he wrote “I’m sorry that I will never be able to make amends to you. I am sure you all carry this unwanted burden on your shoulders every day and will continue to do so for the rest of your lives. … I always will and I deserve to carry a great burden for what I have done to you.”
Lopez, who imposed a 188-month sentence, also heard from the mother of a teenage boy who was 13 years old when he shared sexually explicit content of himself with someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl.
The woman said her son continues to suffer from feelings of humiliation and self-loathing, as well as fear that images of himself may be circulating online.
“It is impossible for me to adequately communicate the sense of shame this has brought to my son,” she said. “Watching my once happy, bubbly, outgoing boy be engulfed in despair fills me with a despondence that I have never known.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Griffith said the victim and his mother “are a microcosm of the dozens and dozens of children that were impacted.”
City News Service contributed to this article.