A Kittery man pleaded guilty to transporting child pornography images Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
Thomas Stewart, 31, of Kittery faces five to 20 years in prison. He also faces up to a $250,000 fine and from five years to life of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank said in a news release.
According to court records, Stewart uploaded numerous images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct to a Dropbox cloud storage account that he controlled. An investigation found that the IP address used to log into the Dropbox account was assigned to Stewart’s home.
Investigators obtained a search warrant in December and seized several electronic devices that included a Samsung tablet. Stewart admitted using the tablet to access child pornography and he told investigators that he stored hundreds of child pornography files in his Dropbox account.
He will be sentenced at a later date. The Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit, the U.S. Secret Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service conducted the investigation.
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