Teacher Patrick McMahon Sentenced For Child Porn After Ex-Wife Hands Over Laptop To Police
(CBS4) - A high school biology teacher in southeastern Colorado was sentenced to nearly four years in a federal prison last week for possession of child pornography in a case that started when the man's ex-wife walked into the Colorado Springs Police Department with his laptop. A judge ordered Patrick McMahon, 30, to serve 46 months behind bars and five additional years of supervision after his release, the United States Attorney General's Office in Denver announced Friday.
McMahon was arrested in January of 2019, days after his ex-wife brought the laptop to detectives and told them McMahon had previously shown her child pornography from the device. Investigators from CSPD and Colorado's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force obtained a search warrant for the laptop and found files of child pornography. On Jan. 7, 2019, those same investigators confronted McMahon at his school in Calhan. They had more search warrants. They discovered McMahon had more child porn.
Image files and video files were found on his cellphone taken from him at the school, and also on two hard drives on a desktop computer at his home, according to case documents.
Copies of the files were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. That agency confirmed several of the children in 602 of the still images and two of the videos in McMahon's possession were child victims already known to law enforcement.
U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson ordered McMahon to pay $3,000 each to 10 of those victims as part of the sentence. Case documents identified the victims by the names of image compilations such as "$Kids," "BluePillow1," SweetPinkSugar," SweetWhiteSugar," and "PinkHeartSisters."
McMahon pleaded guilty to the possession charge in January 2020, a year after his arrest.
"The victimization of children is a heartbreaking violation of trust and HSI worked relentlessly with our partners to bring McMahon to justice" said Steven Cagen, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, Denver." Because he was a teacher, we hope this sentence ensures he can never work with children again."
McMahon, free on bond, appeared virtually at the Nov. 2 sentencing. Following the sentencing, the judge ordered McMahon to report to a federal prison.
A LinkedIn profile for a Patrick McMahon indicated he taught biology at Ellicott High School in Calhan since July of 2017. A search of online public records showed no other criminal offenses in McMahon's background. He was part of a divorce filed in 2016.