Kaua'i man pleads guilty to having child porn

Associated Press

A Kaua'i man accused of possessing tens of thousands of images of child pornography pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court.

Martin Finer, 59, of Kapa'a, faces 10 to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced April 5 for possession of child pornography and posting an advertisement for child pornography on the Internet, U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo said.

Finer had stored about 58,900 still images and 3,000 movies of child pornography on his computer hard drives, according to an indictment returned in May 2002 by a federal grand jury. The second charge stemmed from an independent investigation by law enforcement officers in New York, Kubo said.

In April 2002, an undercover officer accessed an Internet chat room that dealt with preteen children and saw an advertisement from Finer, who used the screen name "happydad," Kubo said.

The ad offered to trade pictures, and during an online chat, Finer gave the officer a password to a file server run by Finer that was found to contain still pictures and movies of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Finer has been held at the federal detention center in Honolulu.