CITRUS COUNTY, Fla. – A 76-year-old Citrus County man will spend the rest of his life behind bars after being sentenced to 215 years in state prison for downloading and sharing child sexual abuse material.
Michael Francis Coburn received the multi-century sentence in the Florida Department of Corrections following a complex cyber investigation that tracked the illicit digital activity directly to his home.
Coburn was convicted on 23 felony counts, which included ten counts of possession of child pornography involving ten or more images, three counts of standard possession, and ten counts of transmission of child pornography by an electronic device.
The case dates back to October 2024. It began when Detective Patrick Martin of the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office High Tech Crimes Unit received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Working in tandem with NCMEC and the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, Detective Martin utilized specialized investigative techniques to confirm that Coburn possessed a large volume of illicit images and videos.
After uncovering the files, Detective Martin and the Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division executed a search warrant at Coburn’s residence. Investigators seized several digital storage devices containing the evidence, and Coburn was arrested and booked into the Citrus County Detention Facility.
Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Bill Gladson commended the thoroughness of the investigation, noting the staggering volume of material recovered from Coburn’s devices.
“I commend the detective in this case for following up on this report and apprehending the defendant,” Gladson said. “Officials collected 37.4 gigabytes of child porn during their investigation. That’s a massive amount of this illicit content. To put this into perspective, if you were to use this much data on a cellular plan, it would allow you to browse the web for nearly 4,000 hours.”
Assistant State Attorney Kaitlyn Mannis served as the prosecutor on the case, successfully securing the lengthy prison term.
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