Former AAC Board President Mark Black Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison

Mark Black, the former board president of the Arlington Aquatic Club (AAC), has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually exploiting numerous children.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday Black’s sentencing after the 50-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to produce child pornography and one count of coercion and enticement in January.

Between January 2018 and October 2021, Black was a member of two online groups dedicated to locating prepubescent girls online and convincing them to livestream themselves in sexually explicit conduct, according to court documents. Black and his co-conspirators would secretly record the streams and share the videos with each other.

In its press release, the DOJ outlined two specific instances in July 2019 when Black first “induced a prepubescent minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct on a live-streaming application while screen-recording that activity” and then he and a co-conspirator “groomed another prepubescent minor to engage in sexually explicit acts on a photo- and video-sharing application.” The co-conspirator then hacked into the girl’s live video feed and recorded the sexual acts before sending them to Black.

Black and the same co-conspirator were members of two additional online groups between July 2019 and March 2022. The groups were dedicated to “the sexual exploitation of children and the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”

“In January 2021, Black sent CSAM of a minor to one of the groups,” the DOJ said.

Black’s electronic devices were found to contain approximately 172,707 images of suspected CSAM. Over 1,300 of those files depicted identified victims of his conduct.

An Arlington native, Black was also a former high-ranking lawyer at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), where he was most recently special counsel in the general counsel’s office which insures the deposits of U.S. commercial and savings banks.

AAC is a Virginia-based club that earned silver medal status in USA Swimming’s 2022-23 excellence program. AAC produced a Tokyo Olympian two summers ago and achieved gold medal certification for the first time in 2021-22.