Dan Halloran, a former member of the New York City Council who once spent five years in federal prison on corruption and fraud charges, has been arrested in Miami and charged with child pornography, federal authorities said.
Halloran was arrested at Miami International Airport on Saturday after he was allegedly caught with approximately 1,000 videos depicting child sexual abuse, the Miami Herald reported, citing the federal criminal complaint.
The 54-year-old former politician, who now works as a scuba diving instructor, was traveling home from Cuba to New York when he had a layover in Miami.
Photos shared on his Instagram account suggest he was on a diving trip at Jardines de la Reina (Gardens of the Queen), a marine reserve located about 60 miles off the southeastern coast of Cuba.
Shortly after stepping off an American Airlines flight from Camaguey, he was stopped by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer for a “secondary inspection.”
When agents inspected his electronic devices, they initially found 35 videos of child sexual abuse videos in a hidden folder on his iPhone.
The videos depicted “prepubescent” girls being victimized, according to the complaint.
After acknowledging the videos were in his cellphone, he allegedly told authorities that “two-thirds to three-quarters” of the 1,362 files in the album featured child pornography.
Halloran was arrested and booked into the Broward County Main Jail. He was later transferred to the Federal Detention Center in Miami and charged with possession of child pornography and transportation of child pornography.
The disgraced politician, once a rising star in the Republican Party in Queens, was convicted in 2014 for his role in two different bribery and corruption schemes.
He was sentenced a year later to 10 years in federal prison but served just over half of that time. He was released in June 2020 as part of an effort by the Bureau of Prisons to stop the spread of COVID-19, the Queens Daily Eagle reported at the time.
