A Winterport man pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography about five years after police first received a tip about him.
Steven Mathis pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of distribution of child pornography before a federal judge in the U.S. District Court in Bangor. Three counts of promoting child pornography were dismissed.
In August 2021, Mathis sent text messages and explicit images of a 3-year-old girl he was babysitting to another person online, according to court records. Mathis admitted to sending the pictures during an interview with Maine State Police.
Two images were flagged in September 2019 by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and a tip was sent to the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit. After various delays, the investigation into the tips began in November 2021, overlapping with a different state police investigation into Mathis about explicit images of children, according to a previous Bangor Daily News article.
Police interviewed Mathis in August 2021, when he admitted to sexually abusing two children. Mathis fled to Texas at some point after that interview and was arrested there in November 2021. He was then extradited back to Maine.
Mathis is in jail, according to court records. His sentencing is not yet scheduled.
