Waterville Federal Worker Sentenced for Child Pornography
A man named Terrence Talbot, who used to work for the U.S. Geological Survey in Augusta, got in trouble for doing something really bad on his work computer. This happened about a year ago, and he could have gone to jail for up to 20 years. But guess what? He didn’t!
Terrence Talbot, who is 56 years old, was caught looking at and downloading pictures of kids that he shouldn’t have been looking at. That’s a big no-no! Now, he won’t be going to jail for a long time, but he has to follow some rules.
The judge said that Terrence has to do something called “time-served,” which means he already spent some time dealing with the consequences of what he did. But it’s not over for him yet! He also has to be supervised for five years, and he has to pay $38,000 to make up for what he did.
This all started when Terrence got arrested in December last year. He got out of trouble by paying $2,500, but he had to promise not to do anything bad while he was waiting to go to court. The things he did could have put him in jail for ten years, and he might have had to pay a really big fine too.
Terrence admitted to the people investigating him that he was using his work computer to look at pictures he shouldn’t have been looking at. He even downloaded these pictures and put them on a special drive. Not good!
The investigators found out about this when they got a tip in July that an employee was using a work computer for some really inappropriate stuff. When they talked to Terrence, he said he didn’t have any other computers to use, just his work one.
Now, Terrence got his punishment in a big building called the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building & Courthouse in Bangor. A person called Judge Lance Walker made the decision. Terrence had a lawyer named Brad Grant, but we couldn’t reach him for a comment. It looks like Terrence got into some big trouble, and he has to be really careful for the next five years.
