A Dingwall man found with thousands of indecent images and videos of children has been jailed for 22 months.
Liam Mackay, 31, previously admitted downloading stills and footage of children aged between two and 12 and appeared for sentence on Thursday.
Inverness Sheriff Court had earlier been told that police raided his home after receiving intelligence that an electronic device had accessed websites for child porn.
When officers arrived at the property on May 7 2020 to execute a warrant, they discovered a USB stick hidden in the hollow leg of his bed.
Inverness Sheriff Court heard that a cursory examination of it revealed images of children aged between two years and 12 years being abused.
Fiscal depute Alison Young said that forensic analysis discovered 2,180 still images and 315 videos and that Mackay was a registered sex offender and on a community payback order.
They were categorised in three rankings of obscenity, the highest being ‘A’, of which there were 308 images and 171 videos.
In ‘B’, there were 511 stills and 107 videos, and in ‘C’, the memory stick had 1,361 photographs and 37 videos.
They were created between March and December, 2019.
The court was told that Mackay, of Deas Avenue, had previous convictions, one for a sexual contact offence against a 14-year-old girl, and for similar charges of possessing indecent images. His latest offence was committed while he was still under supervision for his offending. The court heard he had also downloaded indecent images on a previous occasion while under supervision.
Mackay admitted downloading indecent images and videos, the play time of which was a total of one day, six hours, three minutes and one second.
His sentence carries an extra 30 months if he committed another crime under a release licence.
He was also placed on the sex offender’s register indefinitely but Sheriff Ian Cruickshank did not impose a Sex Offences Prevention Order as he was be under strict supervision for years to come.
