Tina L. Scott
MMC Staff
LINCOLN COUNTY – A Merrill man is in custody and facing 16 felony charges of possession of child pornography following the execution of a search warrant at his home on Friday, Aug. 19.
Matthew A. Czarnecki, 26, appeared in Lincoln County Court on Monday, Aug. 22 for an initial appearance, and the court set a cash bond of $50,000.00, along with restrictions that he is to have no contact with anyone under the age of 18 years old and is not to possess any electronic device.
If convicted, Czarnecki faces up to a $100,000.00 fine or up to 25 years in prison or both for each of the 16 counts. In addition, the State asked the court to invoke the provision of Wis. Statutes Section 939.617, that upon conviction the Court impose a bifurcated sentence, including a term of initial confinement of at least three years. Czarnecki can also be fined an additional surcharge of $500.00 for each image or each copy of an image, as defined in 973.042(1) Wis. Statutes, that is associated with the crime.
According to the complaint on file, law enforcement received a tip from a Cyber Tipline on May 17 that identified an account, later identified belonging to Czarnecki, that had been used to download and share 16 videos identified as child pornography. The probable cause portion of the document alleged Czarnecki had received the videos, which were of different female and male children, some of whom appeared to be as young as toddlers and four to six years old, being raped and sodomized by adults and older teens, as well as children of multiple ages being involved in other sexually explicit acts.
The videos were alleged to have come via private chat messages between Dec. 5 and Dec. 11, 2021, as a result of using the kik app.
A scheduling conference has been set for Thursday, Sept. 8.