Hall County man facing 26 more charges months after child porn bust

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A Hall County man is facing 26 new counts of sexual exploitation of children, nearly three months after authorities arrested him following a child porn bust.

Steven Joseph Robertson, 27, has been in jail without bond since his October arrest. He was initially facing 26 counts of sexual exploitation of children after sheriff’s deputies allegedly found 26 explicit videos on devices seized from his Flowery Branch home.

RELATED: Flowery Branch man faces 26 counts of exploiting children after child porn bust

Investigators completed processing those devices this week and found “additional videos of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” according to the Hall County Sheriff’s Office.

That prompted the agency to double the number of charges against Robertson.

Authorities began investigating him after the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force passed along a cyber tip. Another cyber tip prompted a similar investigation last month.

The tip led to a device on Truelove Road in unincorporated Gainesville, according to the sheriff’s office. The address matched that of a registered sex offender, 42-year-old Juan Daniel Martinez.

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Martinez first registered following a 1996 sexual assault conviction in Texas. He was also convicted in 2017 of sexual exploitation of children in Georgia, state records show.

Hall County deputies passed the cyber tip to the local Georgia Department of Community Supervision office, which seized several phones from Martinez on Dec. 13.

Martinez has been in the Hall County Jail since then after he was arrested on an alleged probation violation.

Authorities this week added 85 charges of sexual exploitation of children after they completed processing the devices.

The 85 counts correspond to “at least 85 images of children engaged in sexually explicit displays and/or acts,” a sheriff’s spokesman said in a news release.

Both cases remain under investigation.

In other news: 

The fire shut down Memorial Drive between 2nd Street and Club Place Tuesday afternoon and part of Wednesday morning.