ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Alexander M.M. Uballez, United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, announced that Timothy Andrew Marquez was sentenced on Sept. 27 to 10 years and one month in prison. Marquez, 27, of Bayard, New Mexico, pleaded guilty on Dec. 19, 2018, to receiving child pornography.

According to court records, on Dec. 18, 2017, Dropbox Inc. submitted a cyber tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding child pornography being downloaded into a Dropbox account associated with Marquez’s email address. The IP address associated with the uploaded photos came back to Marquez’s residence in Bayard.

In his plea agreement, Marquez admitted to receiving child pornography in his Dropbox account on Nov. 6, 2017, and that he knew the material depicted a child engaging in sexual activity with an adult.

Upon his release from prison, Marquez will be subject to five years of supervised release and must register as a sex offender.

Homeland Security Investigations, the New Mexico State Police and the Las Cruces Police Department investigated this case as part of the New Mexico Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. Assistant United States Attorneys Eliot Neal and Marissa A. Ong prosecuted the case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.

The ICAC Task Force Program is a nation-wide network of task forces including over 90 federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies in New Mexico dedicated to investigating, prosecuting and developing effective responses to Internet crimes against children.