Iron County Jail inmate found to have child porn stored on cellphone receives sentence

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CEDAR CITY — An Iron County Jail inmate who already was serving time for drug convictions will be incarcerated for at least two more years after police investigators found images of child pornography on his cellphone.

Michael Anthony Bertolini, 38, was sentenced in 5th District Court in Cedar City on May 9. He had previously pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, each of which is a second-degree felony punishable by a term of 1-15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

Judge Matthew L. Bell ordered that two of the 1-to-15 year sentences run consecutively to each other, with the third one to run concurrently with the first two, along with the term Bertolini is currently serving. That means Bertolini’s sentence will be for a minimum of two years and for as long as 30 years in prison, with the final determination to be made by the Utah Board of Pardons.

Bertolini also was ordered to pay $2,000 in fines, plus any restitution that later may be applied.

According to a probable cause statement filed in September 2021 in support of the charges, an officer at the jail was reviewing some recordings of inmate phone calls and listened to a conversation wherein Bertolini had talked to his girlfriend about images of child pornography that were on his phone.

Stock image | Photo by Althom/iStock/Getty Images Plus, St. George News / Cedar City News

Investigators subsequently visited the girlfriend at her home and located the phone in question, which reportedly did contain “many (more than 10) images of obvious child pornography,” according to the affidavit.

Then, while being interviewed at the jail after being read his Miranda rights, Bertolini reportedly admitted to police that he had “about 50 to 100” images of child pornography stored on his phone, most of which had reportedly been hidden within a secret picture vault disguised as a calculator application.

One of the conditions of Bertolini’s drug court agreement was that his phone was subject to being searched and inspected at any time.

Although Bertolini was initially charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, seven of the charges were dropped in exchange for his guilty pleas, which he entered on Feb. 28.

Should he choose to appeal his sentence, Bertolini has 30 days to do so in writing, the judge added.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

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