Abilene Man Pleads Guilty to Paying 12, 13 Year Olds for Sexually Explicit Video

A 27-year-old man who paid two young boys $200 to produce a sexually explicit video pleaded guilty today to federal child pornography charges, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton.

Mark Penfield Eichorn, a former preschool teacher's assistant, was indicted in June. He pleaded guilty Tuesday to production of child pornography before U.S. Magistrate Judge John R. Parker.

According to plea papers, Mr. Eichorn admitted that he contacted two young boys, ages 12 and 13, via Snapchat and asked them to produce a sexually explicit video of themselves.

The children, who lived in Georgia, later confided to law enforcement that they produced a 90-second video as instructed and sent it to Mr. Eichorn, who paid them $200 via Venmo. Financial and phone records corroborated their accounts.

In an interview with law enforcement, Mr. Eichorn admitted that he knew the children were roughly 13 years old when he asked them to produce the video, and that he paid them $200 for it.

At a detention hearing shortly after he was indicted, federal law enforcement testified that when asked about the children in Georgia, Mr. Eichorn responded, "just those two?"

Mr. Eichorn now faces 30 years in federal prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release.

Homeland Security Investigations' Dallas Field Division and the Abilene Police Department conducted the investigation with the assistance of the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office in Georgia. Assistant U.S. Attorney Whitney Ohlhausen is prosecuting the case.