A 23-year-old Oxford Village man will be spending 12? years in federal prison following his conviction on charges of transportation of child pornography in interstate commerce.
On June 17, Matthew Mercer-Kinser was sentenced in Federal District Court to 151 months in federal prison to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to the charges against him in February 2009.
According to court records, Mercer-Kinser amassed a collection of thousands of videos and images of child pornography while living in Georgia.
When he relocated to Michigan in the spring of 2008, he brought his collection with him.
With assistance from the Oxford Village Police Department, agents from Federal Bureau of Investigation raided 61 East Street ? Mercer-Kinser’s home in the village at the time ? in May 2008. Agents executed search and arrest warrants.
The Leader reported on the raid, but at the time, no information about it was available from the FBI.
The illegal images and movies that he had collected over time included graphic depictions of the sexual assault of infants and small children, bondage and bestiality.
The FBI investigation of Mercer-Kinser was initiated by a referral from the Australian Federal Police, when Mercer-Kinser sent hundreds of child pornography images to an undercover Australian officer through his photo sharing account.
Further investigation revealed that among Mercer-Kinser’s collection were approximately 1800 images of child pornography that had previously been identified by law enforcement, depicting over 100 children who had been sexually victimized.