A Jefferson County man has been detained pending trial after federal prosecutors charged him with receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material found during a search of his Dexter home.
Mark Hill, 55, appeared in federal court in Syracuse last week, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York. The complaint alleges that investigators searched his home Sept. 9 and recovered a laptop and hard drive containing thousands of files he had downloaded through an internet-based peer-to-peer file-sharing program. The file count and alleged downloading are prosecutors' claims, not findings made at trial.
Hill is required to register as a sex offender because of a 2013 New York conviction for third-degree rape, the office said. The new federal charges are separate from that earlier conviction and remain unresolved.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Carla Freedman ordered Hill detained pending trial after his appearance. The prosecutor's office did not give a trial date in its announcement.
If convicted of receiving child sexual abuse material, Hill faces a statutory prison range of 15 to 40 years. The possession charge carries a range of 10 to 20 years, prosecutors said. Each charge may carry a fine of up to $250,000, and the office said supervised release could run from at least five years to life. Those ranges describe possible penalties, not a sentence; a judge would determine any punishment after a conviction.
Homeland Security Investigations is leading the investigation with assistance from the New York State Police, Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kevin Cheung and Adrian LaRochelle are prosecuting the case under the Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood initiative, which coordinates federal, state and local work on child exploitation investigations and victim identification.
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