Damon Rallis sentencing delayed to 2024

The sentencing of Damon Rallis, a longtime Southold Town building department employee and one-time candidate for town supervisor, has been delayed. 

Mr. Rallis pleaded guilty to possession of child sex abuse materials in April and was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday afternoon. His defense attorney, Jason Russo, confirmed the adjournment. 

“The United States Probation Department needs additional time to complete his pre-sentence report, that was delayed a little bit,” Mr. Russo said in a phone interview. “That hasn’t been completed, which is a necessary precursor to the sentencing moving forward.”

Mr. Russo said he predicts the sentencing will be pushed to next year, either in January or February. An employee at the United States District Court for the New York Eastern District in Central Islip said Mr. Rallis’ sentencing was not on the court calendar yet. 

According to court documents, Mr. Rallis, who previously served as vice chairman of Southold Town’s Democratic party, became the subject of a federal investigation after he reportedly shared a pair of sexually explicit videos of toddlers with an undercover FBI agent. The images were distributed via an “invite-only” group chat on the social media platform Kik in 2020 under the online alias “dirtydaddy431.”

Investigators executed a search warrant and raided Mr. Rallis’ Southold home in February 2021. At an arraignment hearing later that year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Scotti said agents discovered a hidden camera that was angled to capture images of visitors using the bathroom in his home. 

During the raid, Mr. Rallis, who had been a scoutmaster in Greenport, admitted to law enforcement that he had viewed and posted child sex abuse materials and that he would delete images after viewing them, according to a sworn affidavit from an FBI special agent. 

Mr. Rallis faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison.