Child porn yields 8-year prison term for North Lima man

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A North Lima man was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to 15 counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor and one count of attempted pandering obscenity involving a minor.

Mark Lucicosky, 43, of Woodworth Road, was sentenced Thursday by Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Lucicosky initially had been indicted by a county grand jury May 14, 2015, on 17 counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor, with the alleged offenses having occurred in November 2014 and Jan. 15, 2015.

In the plea agreement, the prosecution dropped one count and reduced another to the attempted offense.

On Jan. 15, 2015, agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, together with Beaver Township police and county sheriff’s office deputies, executed a search warrant at Lucicosky’s residence.

During the search, a BCI agent found images on a compact disc of adolescent males engaged in sex acts.

“This defendant had a large amount of child pornography,” said Jennifer McLaughlin, an assistant county prosecutor, explaining why she sought a 10-year prison term for him.

Agents found 696 video images of child pornography and an additional 20,420 graphic images of child porn, she said.

In a Jan. 15, 2015, interview with BCI agents, Lucicosky admitted downloading and sharing child pornography using peer-to-peer, file-sharing software, but said he never had sexual contact with a child.

He agreed to take a BCI-administered polygraph exam that day, and the examiner concluded Lucicosky had told BCI agents the truth in the earlier interview.

“There is a real child somewhere at the beginning of all of this – a real child that is being victimized again and again and again every time somebody downloads these videos, “ McLaughlin said.

Lucicosky will be on probation for five years after prison and must register as a sex offender every 180 days for 25 years.