A 74-year-old architect who designed homes for Long Island’s rich and famous has admitted to making child pornography using images of children that he photographed in public.
Jay Lockett Sears, of East Moriches, pleaded guilty Friday at Central Islip federal court to possessing child pornography.
“Sears victimized children by using their innocent faces to create child pornography,” Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a news release. “He then dragged them further into his aberrant fantasy world by adding his own images to these pictures.”
Prosecutors said Sears created hundreds of images of child porn by taking photos of children at beach club parties and other events, and then placing the heads of the children onto images of adult bodies engaged in sexual activity.
Some of the images included pictures of Sears’ face pasted onto the bodies of other males so as to appear as if he were having sexual relations with children, authorities added.
Suffolk County police Computer Crimes Squad detectives began investigating him when hundreds of the photos were found in a dumpster outside of his home on Jan. 11, 2013.
He was sentenced to 3 weeks time served, 6 months home confinement and 5 years supervised release.