Michigan Man to Pay $63,000 and Spend Five Years in Prison for Possession of Child Pornography

• A Michigan man was sentenced to five years in prison for possession of child sexual abuse material
• David Bartels used Tor to look for child pornography and to surf the dark web
• He was employed at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay and had over 41,000 images of CSAM

David Mark Bartels, 38, from the city of White Cloud, Michigan, has been sentenced to five years in prison and fined $63,000 in restitution. Bartels admitted to buying child sexual abuse material (CSAM) while he worked at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

Investigators found over 41,026 pornographic images and videos of children upon searching. They seized a five terabyte hard drive from him that stored child porn in the folder location: “\NSFW\Nope\Dont open\You were Warned\Deeper\”

They found 1,500 images and 285 illicit videos. Bartel would use the Tor browser to watch children’s images and videos depicting bondage, domination, and sadomasochism. Sadomasochism is the combination of sadism and masochism, referring to inflicting or receiving pain or humiliation for sexual pleasure, in this case involving children.

Bartels also surfed the dark web to access explicit content depicting children. He pleaded guilty in January 2025 to the possession of CSAM while being employed in the armed forces outside of the U.S.

In another instance, a group of undercover agents caught a predator who sent sex toys to the agent posing as a mother of a seven-year-old child. He urged the mother to groom the child using the sex toys and sent explicit content to be shown to the child.

He was caught at the airport where he was about to board an airplane to meet the purported mother and sexually exploit the child.

An increasing number of middle-aged individuals are engaging with child pornography, indicating a dangerous shift in the behavior that contributes to the exploitation and abuse of children for profit.

Children are easier to exploit, especially when they are known to them and are trusted by them. Research indicates that children depicted in CSAM are often known to the perpetrator, and the visuals are captured in the child’s or the predator's home. 

Parental offenders causing family-based sexual exploitation, online groomers, and those looking for vulnerable children on social media together pose a risk to children, which calls for strict legal action, as observed in the case of Bartels.