CLEARFIELD – A DuBois man will be spending time in state prison for possessing child pornography.
During sentencing court on Friday, Kazin Matthew Shafer, 23, pleaded guilty to five counts of felony possession of child pornography and was sentenced by President Judge Fredric J. Ammerman to serve two to four years in state prison.
Originally he was charged with 85 counts of this offense.
It was noted that he was evaluated by a member of the sex offenders’ board, but it was determined that he does not meet the criteria of a sexually violent predator. He will still have to register with authorities under Megan’s Law.
He is not permitted to have unsupervised contact with any female under the age of 18.
The charges stem from an investigation into images stored onto his phone.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, police received several tips about the images between May and Sept. of 2023. One of the items was a video of a prepubescent child having sex with an unknown male.
There were 20 videos of indecent contact and four with children involving nudity.
Information from the cell phone provider reportedly traced the phone to a DuBois woman and its Internet activity to Shafer, including photos he took of himself and texts by “Kaz”. It became obvious that Shafer was on the woman’s phone plan.
At this stage police found an additional 26 videos involving indecent contact and two videos involving child nudity which were uploaded in Feb., April, May and June of that same year.
A search warrant was served on Shafer’s residence on Oct. 6, 2023. On his phone, investigators found more child pornography including the images originally reported, according to the criminal complaint.
In all there were 72 images of child porn involving indecent contact and 13 images of child porn with nudity, according to authorities.
Initially, Shafer denied searching for child pornography online, but later admitted to investigators that he was “in a dark place at the time” and there were still files on his phone.
