Elmont resident, horse trainer to be arraigned on child pornography charges

An 80-year-old Elmont resident and former horse trainer is facing up to 20 years in federal prison for sexually exploiting a minor and producing and transporting a slew of child pornography over the past 30 years, according to court documents. Daniel Mullan is due to be arraigned in Eastern District Court today at 3 p.m.

According to the indictment, which was filed in Eastern District Court in Sept. 2017, Mullan enticed an unnamed male teenager to “engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing one or more visual depictions of such conduct” and knew that the pornography would be transported internationally and throughout the United States between Jan. 1999 and Dec. 2006. The pornography, on cameras, hard drives, disk drives, flash drives, DVDs and video tapes, were seized by law enforcement officials from Mullan’s Elmont home in June 2017 and from a storage unit in Melville in Aug. 2017.

Government officials also reported that he transported a minor across the United States and internationally, and said that Mullan appeared in many of the images and videos dating back to the early 1980s. Those boys, U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue reported, have been interviewed and confirmed to federal law enforcement officials that they were sexually assaulted.

Additionally, in a letter submitted to Judge A. Kathleen Tomlinson before the arraignment, Donoghue wrote that Mullan was a danger to society and requested a permanent order of detention. He wrote that law enforcement seized a safe deposit box, where Mullan — who is best known for helping to train Triple Crown-winner Secretariat in 1973 — stored more than $300,000 in “hush money” for the victim. Donoghue also noted that Mullan told Irish court officials that he believed the victim was looking for money and he could “settle this matter and persuade the alleged injured party of the errors of their ways.”

“The protection of children is a priority for this office and Department of Justice,” Donoghue said in a news release. “Those who exploit and victimize children will be identified and brought to justice.”

He also thanked the FBI’s Long Island Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which comprises the FBI and local law enforcement agencies, for its work.

Mullan was previously extradited to Ireland in 2014 to answer questions about sexual assault and the production of child pornography in the country between 2000 and 2005. In 2016, he pleaded guilty in Irish court to 10 offenses, including four counts of sexual assault, two of attempted buggery, two of production of child pornography and two of possession of child pornography.

He was extradited back to the United States on Aug. 15 for the arraignment.