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Man gets 5 years for selling child porn online [The Salem News, Beverly, Mass. :: ]
[April 23, 2014]

Man gets 5 years for selling child porn online [The Salem News, Beverly, Mass. :: ]


(Salem News (MA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) April 23--BEVERLY -- A Beverly man who admitted earlier this year to selling child pornography on Amazon.com and another Internet bookseller has been sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Stanton Hager, 67, was living in the Garden City Towers apartment complex on Sohier Road, across the street from Briscoe Middle School, prior to his arrest.

While there were no reports of Hager molesting children in Beverly, prosecutors revealed earlier this year that Hager kept diaries in which he referred to sexual contact with children in southeast Asia during visits there.

During a sentencing hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Boston, Hager received the minimum mandatory five-year prison term, to be followed by five years of supervised release, according to the court file.

He was also ordered by Judge Rya Zobel to forfeit an array of materials and electronics, including several computers, storage drives, a camera, a collection of 24 8-mm films, a collection of 35-mm still negatives, a VHS tape, and numerous journals and other documents.



The sentencing came three months after Hager admitted to the charges in January.

He was originally arrested in May 2013, after a package of child pornography intended for a customer ended up in the mail room of an Atlanta bank.


The bank contacted authorities, who opened an investigation that led them to Hager's online selling activity on Amazon.com and a second website, Alibris, that specializes in rare books.

He had managed to continue selling child pornography, which he described as "child erotica," on Amazon.com for about five years. Prosecutors estimated he sold about $60,000 worth of materials during that time.

Hager's name also came up in separate investigations involving a suspected child pornography distributor in Mississippi and on a list of customers of an overseas child porn seller, prosecutors said at the time.

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, via email at [email protected] or on Twitter @SNJulieManganis.

___ (c)2014 The Salem News (Beverly, Mass.) Visit The Salem News (Beverly, Mass.) at www.salemnews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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