A Villager is headed to prison on multiple child pornography charges.
Joseph Leo Becker, 70, was sentenced Monday in Sumter County Court to nine years in state prison. He was immediately confined to the Sumter County Detention Center.
Becker was arrested in 2018 on 24 counts of possessing obscene material at his home at 4299 Deskin Lane in the Village of Osceola Hills.
According to a Sumter County Sheriff’s Office report, an undercover internet investigation was conducted in the Central Florida area on computers that were offering to distribute child pornography. One of the computers identified was located at Becker’s address, so the sheriff’s office obtained a search warrant to investigate.
Becker told deputies he used a file-sharing program called Shareaza on his Toshiba laptop and that he told his wife not to go onto that account, the report said. He said he used the file-sharing program to look up music. But he added that sometimes while searching for music, “bad stuff will pop up,” which he described as pornography. Becker said that he tried to delete those pornographic videos when they popped up. Deputies copied 24 files from Becker’s laptop that appeared to be child pornography, which gave them probable cause to arrest Becker.
