Local man gets 10 years of probation after pleading guilty in child porn case

IDAHO FALLS — An Idaho Falls man was sentenced to 10 years of felony probation after accepting a plea agreement in a child pornography case.

Matthew Roderick Perfect, 25, was initially charged with seven felony counts of possession of child pornography, and on Nov. 22, accepted a plea agreement. As part of the agreement, Perfect pleaded guilty to two counts of possession, with the state agreeing to dismiss the remaining charges.

On Feb. 10, for both counts, he was sentenced to a three-year fixed sentence and seven years indeterminate, for a total of ten years. These will run concurrently, but according to the sentencing documents, the court suspended his sentence and placed Perfect under supervised probation for 10 years.

As part of the probation, Perfect was ordered to turn himself in on Feb. 14 to serve 30 days of incarceration and complete 100 hours of community service. He was also given 180 days of discretionary jail time, which his probation officer could enforce if needed. The conditions also state that Perfect is ordered to obtain his GED.

According to the probable cause affidavit, the Idaho Falls Police Department began investigating Perfect in November 2023 after the case was handed to it by the Anchorage Police Department, which determined that the man was living in Idaho Falls.

What spurred the investigation was multiple cybertips about explicit photos and videos of children being uploaded to a cloud-based storage provider in fall 2023. The images and videos depicted children from the ages of 3 to 14 years being sexually abused.

The affidavit states the Anchorage Police Department found a phone number belonging to a Verizon account. A search warrant was obtained, which returned to an address in Idaho Falls. The investigator at IFPD learned from information on the phone that Perfect worked as a manager at a local Subway.

On Jan. 9, 2024, another detective witnessed the 25-year-old leaving the residence in Idaho Falls and going to work. Perfect was detained at the restaurant, and a Samsung phone was seized from him. The investigators read him his Miranda Rights and later interviewed him.

The affidavit states that a forensic download of the man’s phone showed seven cached images of the explicit materials. It also states that Perfect admitted to receiving links from people on the messaging app Kik and just clicking on them. He told investigators that the links downloaded images and other things he didn’t want to see.

One of the detectives asked Perfect how many of the images of child pornography he saw. Perfect responded that he didn’t know. The 25-year-old told the detectives it was like seeing a train wreck and that he could not look away.

Perfect said he left the chat after seeing the links and deleted the images.

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