Rochester man sentenced to 28 days in child pornography case

(ABC 6 News) – A Rochester man who pleaded guilty to five counts of possessing child pornography–minor under 14 will serve 28 days on work release at the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center, according to court documents.

Matthew Gene Marquardt was also sentenced to 5 years’ probation.

If he does not serve the probation without incident, Marquardt could be re-sentenced to 120 months, or 10 years at the MN Correctional Facility in St. Cloud.

Two additional charges of disseminating child pornography–minor under 14 and a sixth charge of possessing child pornography were dismissed at sentencing.

According to court documents, Marquardt was the subject of a cyber tip about child pornography being shared over Snapchat, Meta, and Microsoft.

Police allegedly located around 900 images of child sexual abuse materials, or child pornography featuring children between ages 4 and 12 on Marquardt’s phone, with other photos and videos provided by Snapchat and Meta.

Court documents noted that there were actually 2,742 images that appeared to be CSAM, but many may have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.

Marquardt was ordered to begin his local confinement on or before Feb. 14.