A Utica man was sentenced to five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to possessing child sexual abuse material, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York.
James Winston III, 28, also received 10 years of supervision after his release and must register as a sex offender, federal prosecutors said.
As part of his plea, Winston admitted that several files were uploaded in March 2025 to a cloud-storage account he controlled. Prosecutors said he was found with two phones containing additional files on Dec. 10, 2025; some depicted the sexual abuse of children as young as 3.
U.S. District Judge Anthony Brindisi imposed the sentence. The FBI's Albany Division Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and New York State Police investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Adrian LaRochelle prosecuted it.
The prosecution was part of Project Safe Childhood, a federal initiative involving U.S. attorneys' offices and the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
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