New Mexico man to be sentenced to 6 ½ years in federal prison after pleading guilty to receiving child pornography

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — A New Mexico man pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to receiving child pornography.

This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with assistance from the Las Cruces Police Department.  

William Allen Patterson, 34, of Alamogordo, New Mexico, will be sentenced to 78 months in prison followed by a term of supervised release to be determined by the court. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he will also be required to register as a sex offender when he completes his sentence.

Patterson was arrested Aug. 10, 2016, on a criminal complaint alleging that he possessed and received child pornography from 2002 to 2012 and on Aug. 10, 2016, in Otero County, New Mexico. According to the criminal complaint, the investigation into Patterson began in August 2016. While undergoing a polygraph examination as part of the application process to be a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Patterson admitted to a polygraph examiner that he was addicted to child pornography. On Aug. 9, 2016, law enforcement searched Patterson’s residence and found a hard drive containing at least 10,000 images of child pornography.

During the Jan. 5, 2017, proceedings, Patterson pleaded guilty to a felony information charging him with receiving child pornography. In entering his guilty plea, Patterson admitted that on Aug. 9, 2016, he possessed a hard drive that contained numerous images and videos of child pornography that he had downloaded from the internet. Patterson remains in custody pending a sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marisa A. Ong of the U.S. Attorney’s Las Cruces Branch Office is prosecuting this case.