New York Man Sentenced to 10 Months for Failure to Register as a Sex Offender

Contact: Halsey B. Frank
Assistant United States Attorney
Tel: (207) 780-3257

Portland, Maine:  United States Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II announced that Thomas P. Cortez, 58, of College Point, New York and Portland was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court by Judge Jon D. Levy to 10 months in prison to be followed by five years of supervised release for failing to register as a sex offender.  Cortez pleaded guilty on April 5, 2016. 

According to court documents, Cortez was convicted in Maine in 1989 of unlawful sexual contact with a minor under 14 years old.  As a result, Cortez is required to register as a sex offender for life.  In 1996, Cortez was living in New York when it instituted a sex offender registry. Between about 1996 and about March of 2003, Cortez was registered in New York.  In 2003, Cortez gave New York notice that he was moving back to Maine.  Between 2006 and 2015, Cortez registered in Maine.  After March 2015, Cortez moved to College Point, New York, where he lived with his father and stepmother.  He did not inform Maine that he had moved to New York and he did not register in New York.  In December of 2015, Cortez was arrested in New York and told arresting officers, among other things, that he had been living in New York for about eight months.

In pronouncing sentence, Judge Levy explained that he did not believe that Mr. Cortez did not understand that he had to register, that the purposes of the sentence were to protect the public, to promote respect for law, and to deter Mr. Cortez from reoffending.

The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the Maine Sex Offender Registry, the New York Sex Offender Registry, and the Portland Police Department.