3 years in prison for Carthage chemistry student found with hundreds of child porn images in dorm
Austin Szczodrowski
KENOSHA -- A Carthage College chemistry student found with hundreds of images of child pornography in his dorm room has been sentenced to prison.
Austin Szczodrowski, 22, of Addison, Ill. in January pleaded guilty to four counts of possession of child pornography.
In court on Monday, March 26, he was sentenced to serve three years in prison and 12 years extended supervision on each charge, to be served concurrently.
That means he'll spend three years in prison.
The images are believed to have been downloaded using the campus internet.
Carthage College
According to a criminal complaint, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children got a tip in October of 2016 that someone had uploaded possible child pornography online.
Investigators were able to link IP addresses to two locations: Addison, Illinois and Carthage College in Kenosha.
The college's security director was able to match a suspect, Addison native and chemistry student Austin Szczodrowski.
According to a criminal complaint, Szczodrowski told authorities he's downloaded stockpiles of pornography for years. He told special agents if images were "not a teen who was at least 15 or 16 years old, he would immediately delete it."
He says he also received explicit pictures by talking to teens on the social media app Kik. However, court documents show some of the files recovered by authorities included victims as young as toddlers.
Szczodrowski allegedly told authorities he "downloaded so many at the beginning he did not know everything that was in those files."
Carthage College
Szczodrowski was arrested in March of 2017 on campus -- without incident.