Port Charlotte Man Sentenced To More Than Six Years In Federal Prison For Possessing Child Sexual Abuse Images And Videos

Fort Myers, Florida – U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Barber has sentenced Marquise Thomas (34, Port Charlotte) to six years and six months in federal prison for possessing and accessing with the intent to view images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of a child. The court also sentenced Thomas to a life term of supervised release and ordered him to register as a sex offender. Thomas had been found guilty after a bench trial on May 20, 2022.

According to court documents, Thomas possessed and accessed with the intent to view images and videos depicted the sexual abuse of minors. On January 24, 2019, the FBI executed a search warrant at Thomas’s home and seized his laptop computers and his cellphone. A subsequent forensic analysis of the electronics revealed more than 100 images and 35 videos of children being sexually abused. Thomas had saved the images on his cellphone, and the forensic analysis recovered the videos of the sexual abuse of children that Thomas had accessed with the intent to view before deleting them on his laptops.    

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Fort Myers Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes participation from the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Yolande G. Viacava.

This is another case brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.