A Fairbanks man living in North Pole was convicted on child pornography charges for the second time in the Fairbanks U.S. District Court it was revealed by the US Department of Justice on Thursday.

54-year-old Tommy Hanson was convicted after a three-day trail this week, and is due to be sentenced on January 19th, 2018, said U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder. 

Hanson was convicted the first time on May 31st, 2007 after he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. He admitted to “the use of newsgroup binaries to receive thousands of images of depicting child sexual exploitation, and then backing those images up to CD-ROMS,” prosecutors stated. As a result, he received a sentence of 96 months in prison.

When released from the Federal Correctional Institute on Terminal Island in 2012, a condition of his supervised release, Hanson was not allowed to possess a computer without permission from his parole officer. If he  was found to be in possession of a computer, that device was subject to search.[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]Hanson began using computers and the Internet soon after his release from prison, utilizing Facebook and other social sites, online searches show. Prosecutors say that Hanson even told a friend on Skype Chat that “he wasn’t allowed to have a computer, but, that he  was not concerned about being searched by the ‘feds’ given the remote location of his home.”

On October 12th, probation officers did just that, and when they conducted the search, they found Hanson in possession of a computer and an external hard drive. A forensic search of those devices would turn up thousands of images of child pornography that Hanson had downloaded between 2012 and 2016 using Internet Newsgroups.

Because this is the  second time being convicted of these charges, Hanson faces a minimum of 15 years in prison, and as much as 30. He  also faces a fine of $250,000 and will face supervised release of five years to life if released.

  conviction, fairbanks, federal court, north pole, parole officer, tommy hanson