Man, 71, Gets Prison in Child Porn Case
By Mary McLachlin, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Originally published in The Palm Beach Post, April 12, 2002
WEST PALM BEACH — For three years, retired investment banker Frederick Schreier secretly downloaded and stored on his computer hard drive grisly pictures of children being tortured and sexually abused.
As penance, a federal judge ordered him Thursday to pay a $100,000 fine and spend a year and a day in prison, even though he's 71, sick with post-polio syndrome and uses a motorized wheelchair. "It's a death sentence," attorney Bruce Fleischer said.
He and Schreier's family pleaded that he be allowed to serve his time at home in Aventura and help care for his disabled wife of 50 years, who also uses a wheelchair. The couple's daughter and two sons vowed to spend more time with their parents to ease retirement isolation.
"My dad was always a paragon of propriety and probity," said the older son, corporate tax lawyer Andrew Schreier of New York. "I was shocked, dumbfounded when he pled guilty . . . I could not believe what I was hearing, except for the fact that he was the one telling me."
Schreier was arrested in July 2000 after the photos were found on his computer when he sent it out for repair. He pleaded guilty to possession of pornography and was released on $50,000 bond.
U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley didn't buy defense psychologists' arguments that Schreier had fallen victim to "the seduction of the Internet" and had collected the pictures because he was reliving his own childhood pain.
Shreier's age and deteriorating condition justified a lower sentence than the five years called for by federal guidelines, Hurley said, but the viciousness of the pornography and the length of time spent collecting it made it impossible to merely impose home confinement.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John McMillan said it was the worst type of child pornography he had ever encountered, and asked for the maximum sentence.
"It all boils down to this: Who cries for the children in those photos?" McMillan said. "Don't let Mr. Schreier buy his way out of this. Yes, he's sick, but we shouldn't get a 'Get out of jail free' card when we reach the age of 70."
Hurley set June 3 for Schreier to surrender, provided that the Bureau of Prisons can assign him to a medical facility by then.
