Five days before a jury trial was set to begin for a Whitewater man charged with 16 counts of child porn possession and one count of child sexual exploitation as a persistent repeater, the man entered a plea agreement.
Michael B. Hoffer, 60, of Whitewater, pleaded guilty to four counts of possession of child pornography, and 12 counts of possession of child pornography against him were dismissed. The exploitation charge, which carried a life sentence with the persistent repeater status, also was dismissed.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 30 and faces up to 100 years in prison.
According to the criminal complaint, while moving from a Darien apartment that she shared with Hoffer and another woman, a 23-year-old woman found a cell phone and looked at the phone to deter-mine whom it belonged to, according to the criminal complaint. On the phone, the woman saw several pictures of her 2 1/2-year-old daughter’s private parts, according to the complaint.
The woman turned the phone over to police, who examined the photos on the phone and found 16 close-up pictures of a prepubescent girl’s genitals taken between Dec. 28 and May 21, according to the complaint.
In 2000, Hoffer was convicted in Walworth County court with sexual contact of a person younger than 16 years old, and an incident was re-ported but not prosecuted in 2001. In that case, a neighbor saw Hoffer on a bed with a 2-year-old boy holding the boy’s head near his crotch, according to the complaint.
