Wichita man pleads guilty to child pornography charges

WICHITA — A Wichita man admitted on Monday that he collected more than 3 million child pornography photographs.

Donald W. Schmidt, 74, pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography, authorities said.

In his plea, Schmidt admitted that he was trading child pornography over the Internet via a peer-to-peer network when a police investigator in Florida downloaded child pornography from Schmidt's computer.

Wichita police served a search warrant at Schmidt's home in Wichita last March.

They found two computers hooked up to separate Internet service providers and 11 banker's boxes containing boxes of CDs and DVDs, authorities said.

Forensic analysis identified more than 3 million images of child porn on the computers, external drives and disks.

Schmidt admitted using the peer-to-peer program to distribute child pornography, chatting online about molesting children and organizing his child porn collection to be stored on disks.

Sentencing is set for Jan. 31, 2011. Schmidt faces a penalty of not less than five years and not more than 20 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 on the distribution charge. He also faces a maximum penalty of 10 years and a fine up to $250,000 on the possession charge.

This story was originally published November 16, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Wichita man pleads guilty to child pornography charges."