A pervert who downloaded so many indecent images of children that police cybercrime officers stopped counting once they passed half a million was jailed for 22 months yesterday.
Bryan Reid, 46, was caught with 521,395 indecent images of girls – ranging from newborns to 15-year-olds – and nearly five days worth of pornographic videos which he stored in hard drives at his Buckie home.
Police investigators eventually had to admit it would take months of additional work if they were to catalogue every depraved image.
Sheriff Chris Dickson told Reid, of Buckie, that he had stored a “horrendous number of images” and the gravity of the offences only justified a prison sentence.
He added: “Those who view such material create a demand and is part of the serious abuse of children.”
Reid was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.
Elgin Sheriff Court was told that Reid created specifically named folders to store the material – examples of which included “best of”, “pre-teen” and “keepers”.
In all, 521,395 indecent images were found as a result of the search, comprising 5,270 category A images – the most graphic type – 6,468 category B and 509,657 category C.
There were also 1,395 indecent videos identified, including 189 category A videos, 98 category B and 1,108 category C.
Miss Swain told the court that this equated to a total run time of four days and 23 hours.
Reid, of The Old Mariners House in the Yardie area of Buckie, was at his nephew’s house in the town when police attended and told him about the nature of the inquiry, to which Reid replied: “I am the one who is involved. I always knew I would get caught.”
Police subsequently carried out a search of his home and found a massive number of indecent images of children downloaded onto a vast array of devices.
They included a computer tower with four hard drives, 14 other separate hard drives and eight USB sticks.
The court had heard that it became apparent from Reid’s devices that it would “take months” to complete an analysis and that there were “more images” which had not been manually reviewed.
Police stopped reviewing once they got to more than half a million.
Reid had previously admitted taking, permitting or making indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children and possessing them at The Old Mariners House in Buckie or elsewhere between October 1, 2009 and August 9 last year.
Sentence was deferred until yesterday for the preparation of background reports.
Defence lawyer Ian Cruickshank said the reports showed Reid had expressed “remorse and regret” at his actions.
He called on the sheriff to impose a sentence other than jail, although admitted a social worker had assessed his client as being “a medium risk of reoffending”.
The court heard that first offender Reid has made “open and frank admissions” about his offence throughout the process and that, when speaking to police, stated he had been accessing the images for years.