BANGOR — A West Gardiner man pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to 14 charges relating to the production, transportation and distribution of child sexual abuse material as well as failing to register as a sex offender.
Jon A. Hall, 30, was arrested in September 2022 for a sex offender registry violation after Maine State Police seized an iPhone as part of a search warrant executed in August 2022.
Court records say child sexual abuse material was recovered from that iPhone, including images of a child from another state, and messages from Hall to a person in Maine while Hall lived out of state, many of which contained child sexual abuse material.
At the time of his arrest, Hall had a second phone that contained images of victims younger than 12 he had downloaded from online storage, as well as images he had sought and received directly from a 12-year-old using the internet.
Hall had been required to register as a sex offender following a prior conviction of possessing explicit material depicting a child younger than 12. He failed to update his registry information when he returned to Maine in August 2022 from another state.
He appeared Friday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to plead guilty.
Homeland Security Investigations and the Maine State Police investigated the case.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of transportation of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography, two counts of possession of child pornography, eight counts of distribution of child pornography and one count of failure to register as a sex offender.
A federal judge will determine Hall’s sentence after taking federal sentencing guidelines and other factors into account.
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