Kittery Man Pleads Guilty to Child Sexual Exploitation Offense

Portland, Maine: A Kittery man pleaded guilty today in federal court in Portland to transporting images of child exploitation, U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank announced.

According to court records, in September 2018, Thomas Stewart, 31, uploaded numerous images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct to a Dropbox cloud storage account he controlled. After Dropbox reported the uploading of child exploitation images using its service, investigators determined that the IP address used to log into the Dropbox account was assigned to Stewart’s residence in Kittery.

In December of last year, investigators executed a search warrant at Stewart’s residence and seized several electronic devices, including a Samsung tablet. In an interview with investigators, Stewart admitted using the tablet to access child pornography. He also admitted storing hundreds of child pornography files in his Dropbox account.

Stewart faces a sentence of no less than five years and up to 20 years in prison. He also faces a $250,000 fine and from five years to a lifetime of supervised release. He will be sentenced after the completion of a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office.

The Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit, the U.S. Secret Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated this case. The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.