Federal prosecutors have taken over the criminal case against an ex-police officer accused of storing a cache of child pornography on his computers, raising the stakes in his case.

Paul Bradley Meagher, 42, formerly a UND police officer, was charged with one count of receiving child pornography and two counts of being in possession of child pornography last week in U.S. District Court in Grand Forks, though the court only unsealed his case Monday.

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He pleaded not guilty to the charges at a hearing Monday in Grand Forks' federal courthouse downtown, according to minutes filed with the court.

Meagher previously was charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography in Grand Forks County District Court, though those charges likely will be dropped in light of the federal charges now levelled against him.

With the federal charges, Meagher now faces more prison time, if convicted. Federal sentencing guidelines for child porn offenders are harsher than state ones, with the guidelines setting a mandatory minimum prison term and a longer maximum.

If Meagher is convicted of the federal charges, he would face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a possible maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison, according to U.S. Code.

Court documents allege Meagher was caught downloading a large amount of child porn by the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which in 2011, infiltrated a file-sharing network often used by child pornography offenders.

The BCI planted its own computers inside Freenet, a file-sharing network designed to protect users' anonymity, and were able to discern which users were downloading child porn off the network, according to a court document written by BCI Special Agent Jesse Smith.

Law enforcement carried out a search warrant of Meagher's Grand Forks apartment and allegedly found Meagher's computers downloading images off Freenet at the time of the search, court records say.

Ultimately, officers found more than 100,000 images and videos of child porn on Meagher's computers, with several images showing girls between the ages of 4 and 9 years old being sexually assaulted by adults, said Grand Forks County Assistant State's Attorney Brittney Blake.

Some of the images allegedly found on Meagher's computers dated back to February 2006, according to the federal indictment.

Meagher, who was hired by the UND Police Department in 2004, was fired after criminal charges were filed earlier this month.

He worked at the Grand Forks Juvenile Detention Center from June 1995 to April 1999 before he was transferred to adult corrections, according to an application he submitted in 2004 to the UND Police Department.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Alice Senechal allowed Meagher to be released under conditions he abstain from using the Internet, stay away from children while unsupervised, find a job and live with his parents in Grand Forks, among other terms, according to minutes from Monday's hearing.

Meagher will be held in custody until electronic home monitoring is in place at his parents' home, the minutes say.