Three Southern Tier Men Going to Prison in Federal Child Pornography Cases

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York says three investigations into child pornography in the area are resulting in prison time for two Broome County men and a Tioga County man.

56-year-old Jack Hiller of Port Crane was sentenced Monday, November 25 to three years in prison for possessing child pornography.

Hiller pleaded guilty in February, admitting he used the computer software application Kik to receive sexually explicit images of children, some under the age of 12.  He also admitted storing photos and videos on his electronic devices.

41-year-old Chad Swartwood of Castle Creek pleaded guilty Monday to receiving and attempting to receive child pornography from December of 2017 to December 2018, sometime posing online as a teenage girl having sexually explicit text conversations with people he believed to be boys.  Swartwood admitted sending sexually explicit photos of a young girl he claimed to be himself and soliciting sexually explicit images of the boys.

Swartwood faces at up to 40 years in prison due to a prior conviction in 2000 involving a 9-year-old girl.

He is to be sentenced in March.

23-year-old Mahkya Searles of Tioga County is to serve a little over nine years in federal prison followed by a year of supervised release for receiving and possessing child pornography.  He was sentenced Wednesday, November 27 in Federal Court in Binghamton.

Searles had admitted from April of 2018 to last March he searched for and downloaded child pornography from the internet.

Authorities say in March Searles had over 30 images of child porn on his phone, some involving prepubescent children