A jury in Tampa, FL has convicted Dr. Richard Carino on three counts of receiving child pornography and three counts of possessing child pornography. The Jury listened closely to the testimony of government’s star witness: the doctor’s ex-wife.

Carino, 48, who practiced family medicine in Port Richey, FL, with a specialty in pain management, married a widow with two young children in March 2004. Autumn Carino, 47, worked in her husband’s medical office.

She therefore must have been aware of a DEA investigation of excessive prescriptions for controlled drugs coming out of his office. In fact, the DEA said that one day in March of 2004, her husband wrote 82 prescriptions for phentermine and other easily abused drugs.
Some days he wrote hundreds of prescriptions, the DEA charged.

Eventually, his registration to dispense controlled substances was indefinitely suspended by the state and revoked by the federal government.

But his problems were about to get worse, and therefore so were his wife's. 

Around July 4, 2005, August Carino said she caught her husband at their home computer at 2:30 am. When she approached, he minimized the screen, but she was able to see the name of the web site.

She went online the next day, and discovered that it was a child pornography site.

Her husband had a “strong” personality, she said, so she was careful in choosing her words when she confronted him.

He promised he would get help.

She must have had an inkling that he wouldn’t.

When a local detective turned up to search Dr. Canino’s medical office in connection with the DEA case, Autumn Carino told him about the home computer.

The detective, an acquaintance of Autumn’s, made copies of the hard drives of Dr. Carino’s office computer as well as the home computer, with her consent.

The next month, she testified, she caught her husband once again looking at child pornography. When he got physical with her, she called 911 and had him arrested for domestic violence.

The month after that, she filed for divorce, which was granted in 2006.
 
The investigators found that Carino’s home computer contained 14 pictures of child pornography and video files with graphic depictions of sex acts with children, "one of which appeared to be as young as 6 years old."

They also found 40 deleted files that had names that were suspected of child pornography sites and records of his Internet use found 1,000 hits using child pornography key words.

This month, the jury trial started on the charges against Dr. Carino.

On the prosecution side were the D.A., the U.S. Attorney, the FBI, the DEA, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, computer forensics by the High Tech Investigation Unit, and their witness, Autumn Carino.

The lawyer representing Dr. Carino presented no opening argument and called no witnesses.

But he did have one defense: maybe it was Autumn Carino who was looking at child porn on those two computers. Or the children.

Everything the doctor’s ex-wife said under oath, he said, was “figments from some demented motivation that she had for her husband.”
  
In summation he asked who the jury was going to believe, his client, or the lying ex-wife. They returned the guilty verdicts the same day.

Dr. Carino will be sentenced in October. Each of the three charges of receiving child pornography carries a 5 to 20 year sentence. And each of the three charges of possession child pornography carries a sentence of up to 10 years.

Presumably he will not qualify for visitation rights with Autumn Carino’s children.

In 2006, after his divorce, after he was arrested on the child pornography charges, after his right to prescribe controlled drugs was withdrawn, Richard Carino optimistically started a new business at his old business address: the Came to Believe Ministry.

It is now listed as “inactive.”