TAMPA, Fla — A Tampa attorney will register as a sex offender after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography, according to the Office of the State Attorney for Florida's 13th Judicial Circuit.
Under a plea deal, 51-year-old Chris Ragano pleaded guilty to 33 counts of child porn possession, along with one count of out-of-state transmission of child porn using an electronic device.
Ragano was sentenced to six months in jail – but given credit for the half-year already served in the Hillsborough County Jail since his arrest back in June 2021.
He was ordered to serve eight years of probation, which will include location monitoring, according to prosecutors. The state attorney's office said the terms of the probation will prevent Ragano from living within 1,000 feet of a school, accessing the internet, and from having unsupervised contact with children.
He will be subject to a nighttime curfew and must undergo mandatory mental health treatment, prosecutors said. The probation is expected to last until December 2029.
A spokesperson for the state attorney's office said Ragano's sentence was consistent with similar cases in which the defendant has no "significant criminal history." His last charge was an unrelated misdemeanor almost three decades ago, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said it was also considered that Ragano "did not produce any of the images himself."
Ragano was an attorney of marital and family law, according to his LinkedIn account. He received his Juris Doctorate from South Texas College of Law Houston.
