PORTLAND – A former Isle au Haut man pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court to one count each of transportation of child pornography and possession of child pornography.

Jon R. Hughes, 47, faces a minimum mandatory sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine or both on the transportation charge, according to U.S. Attorney Paula Silsby. Hughes faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine or both on the possession charge, Silsby said.

According to court records, Hughes, who served as the legal guardian of a 13-year-old girl in mid-2005, posed online as a teenage boy and persuaded the girl to take sexually explicit photographs of herself.

On Sept. 1, 2007, Hughes posed as a computer hacker who had hacked into the girl’s computer and sent Internet hyperlinks to some of the explicit photographs to two of the girl’s school classmates. A hyperlink is a clickable link on a Web page that connects a user to another destination on the Internet. The classmates accessed the hyperlinks and viewed the photographs.

The next month, detectives from the state police Computer Crimes Unit obtained information that Hughes had secretly videotaped the girl in the bathroom of the home they shared on Isle au Haut.

During an interview at his home on Oct. 18, 2007, Hughes admitted to videotaping the girl and to possessing child pornography on his computer.

At that time, Hughes consented to the removal and search of his computers and other items. A subsequent forensic examination of a laptop computer obtained from his home revealed hundreds of child pornography images, including the explicit photographs of the girl, as well as many child pornography videos.

In a news release issued Friday, Silsby praised the investigation conducted by the state police Computer Crimes Unit, the U.S. Secret Service and the Knox County Sheriff’s Department.