A man who forgot his cellphone at a Marietta coffee shop was sentenced to 20 years in prison because of the phone's contents, officials said.
Carl Alfred Iverson, 85, was already on probation for computer pornography when he visited a Starbucks in September.
He forgot his phone at the coffee shop.
Workers opened the phone to identify its owner and discovered pornographic photos and videos of children, said Kim Isaza, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office.
They immediately called police, Isaza said.
Employees were able to identify Iverson by first name initially, as he was a regular customer, but they also had a Starbucks customer card with his full name, police said.
Iverson plead guilty in April 2015 to child exploitation after having obscene internet contact with a detective whom Iverson believed to be a 14-year-old child. In that case, Iverson was sentenced to 10 years with 30 days to serve in custody and the rest on probation.
That conviction put him on the Georgia Sex Offender Registry and during his probation, Iverson’s internet use was to be restricted to when he paid bills, and then only under supervision.
“This case serves as a shocking reminder of how there is truly no stereotype of who is capable of committing this type of crime,” said Assistant District Attorney Susan Treadaway, who prosecuted the case. “It also serves as a reminder to anyone engaged in online communications with a person they have never met and know very little about to be cautious in presuming the intentions of who is on the other end.
Iverson plead guilty on Wednesday to eight counts of sexual exploitation of children.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Adele Grubbs accepted Iverson’s plea and sentenced him to 20 years, with seven years to be served in prison and the balance on probation, along with the same sex-offender conditions as imposed under the original case.
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