Utica Man Sentenced To 600 Months For Child Pornography

A Utica man will spend 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.

According to U.S. Attorney Grant Jaquith, 35-year-old Shawn Bunnell will serve the term of 600 months on ten counts of transportation of Child Porn and Possession of Child Porn.

Officials say, a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led a special State Police Task Force to Bunnell who had used a cellphone to produce images depicting the molestation of a 2-year-old girl.

As part of his guilty plea, Bunnell also admitted to transporting and possessing numerous images depicting one or more minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct on a phone in his possession. Bunnell admits to using servers maintained by Google and Dropbox to transport several of the images.

Bunnell was also convicted of Sexual Abuse of a Minor under the age of 11 in March of 2003 and served a 5 year sentence. Bunnell will serve a lifetime of post-supervised release and will forever be registered as a sex offender.

This case was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse.