Onondaga County Man Pleads Guilty to Sexual Exploitation Charge

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Martin Nicholson, age 32, of Geddes, New York, pled guilty today before Senior United States District Judge Hon. Thomas J. McAvoy to Willfully Causing the Sexual Exploitation of a Child, announced United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith, and James N. Hendricks, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

As a part of his plea, Nicholson, a former local high school local track coach, admitted that sometime between 2012 and 2015 he threatened to cut off a relationship he was then having with a minor unless that minor produced and sent him sexually explicit images of another child, who was under the age of 14.  Nicholson further admitted that he received the requested images, and sent them to other users over the Internet. 

The images produced at Nicholson’s direction were recovered from his residence following a search warrant executed there in 2018 after Nicholson was discovered trading other child pornography over Twitter.  

Nicholson faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years, and a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison when he is sentence on February 25, 2020.  He will also be required to serve a term of supervised release of no less than 5 years, and up to life upon completion of his term of incarceration, may be required to pay a fine of up to $250,000, and will be required to register as a sex offender. 

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Syracuse Resident Agency and the New York State Police as a part of the Mid-State Child Exploitation Task Force, assisted by the Wallie Howard Jr. Center for Forensic Sciences, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa M. Fletcher, Project Safe Childhood Coordinator for the Northern District of New York. 

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 identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.