BANGOR, Maine — A federal judge Thursday sentenced a Caribou man to serve five years in prison for possession of child pornography.
Ryan T. Card, 22, had pleaded guilty to the charge on Feb. 27 in U.S. District Court in Bangor.
In the same court Thursday, Chief Judge Nancy Torrensen sentenced him to five years in prison and 20 years of supervised release.
U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank said in a written statement issued Thursday that between about November 2016 and April 2017, Card possessed images of child pornography on his cell phone. At least one of the images, which he had sought out and downloaded from online storage accounts on the internet, depicted a child under the age of 12, according to court records.
According to an affidavit, Card admitted to police that he sought out the images from others through chat applications and attempted to delete them from his cell phone before law enforcement discovered them. He also admitted that he was the only user of the phone.
Card could have faced up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and between five years and a lifetime of supervised release.
The investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the Caribou Police Department, and the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
