New Ulm man charged with child porn possession

A New Ulm man is accused of possessing a large collection of child pornography.

Brett Daniel Mathiowetz, 40, was charged Thursday in Brown County Court with 30 felony counts of possession of pornographic work, a number of those charges involving minors under the age of 14.

A criminal complaint says Brown County investigators were contacted by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) in Minneapolis on June 8 regarding a case involving child pornography possession and distribution.  Court documents say the IP address used for the file sharing was traced to a home owned by Mathiowetz.

The complaint says the ICAC’s report showed files that contained names associated with child porn had been shared from Mathiowetz’s IP address in 2016, and some of those files contained videos from known child pornography sites.

Mathiowetz’s IP address again began sharing files with names associated with child porn in 2022, according to the complaint.  The downloads allegedly occurred in February 2022.  The charging document says that in both 2016 and 2022, file names associated with a local business Mathiowetz is connected to were also shared, implicating him further.

A search warrant was executed on June 21.  A laptop with Mathiowetz’s username and company email was searched and multiple child pornography files were located, according to the complaint.  Investigators say they also discovered a file containing 23 child pornography images.

The complaint says Mathiowetz viewed a number of child pornography videos between the night of Feb 26 and the afternoon of Feb 28.  Many of the files were identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as being from a known series of child porn.  The videos involved children as young as age 3 and contained rape and torture.

Mathiowetz was arrested on Thursday.  He is currently in custody in Brown County.