A former master sergeant in the Massachusetts Air National Guard has been taken into the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to begin serving a sentence of more than six years for possessing images and videos of child pornography, including some involving infants, and distributing more than 70 of the videos over the internet, court records show.
Nicholas J. Wells, 45, was stationed in Sandwich and assigned to the 102nd Security Forces, part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, when he was arrested in 2024, according to federal court filings.
Wells pleaded guilty last September to possession and distribution of child pornography.
At a sentencing hearing on Wednesday in federal court in Boston, US District Judge Indira Talwani ordered Wells to spend 78 months in federal prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release, according to the office of Leah B. Foley, US Attorney for Massachusetts.
US Marshals immediately took Wells into custody, according to court records.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 97 months, two years longer than Talwani ordered. Prosecutors said Wells also shared images of his own children, though they were wearing clothes in the images, and discussed sexually abusing them.
“The Defendant engaged in abhorrent conduct that preys on vulnerable children,” Assistant US Attorney Brian J. Sullivan wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
“The Defendant, as a Security Forces Craftsman in the U.S. Air Force was in a position of trust that makes this already disturbing conduct even more alarming,” Sullivan wrote. “The Defendant, as a father, sharing pictures of his children and making statements about sexually abusing his own children, was also in a position of trust that makes his conduct more concerning and more deserving of a significant penalty.”
A sentencing memo submitted by Wells’s lawyer was sealed from public view at Wells’s request, court records show.
Wells’s sentencing memo “contains sensitive current and historical personal information, including HIPPA related medical and treatment information, about Mr. Wells that should not be publicly available,” Wells’s federal Assistant Public Defender Forest O’Neill-Greenberg wrote in court filings.
O’Neill-Greenberg did not respond to a request for comment.
The FBI focused on Wells after an agent with its Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force in Jacksonville, Fla., discovered an account on the Kik messaging service for a Massachusetts man. The man was sharing photos and videos of child sexual abuse materials with other users, according to an FBI affidavit.
Investigators found more than 300 images and 100 videos depicting child pornography on Wells’s phone. They discovered that he had distributed more than 70 child pornography videos, some involving infants, Foley’s office said.
Wells was ordered off the Cape Cod base and his security clearance was revoked in March 2024 after the FBI searched his home and cellphone, officials said.
Wells joined the Air Force in November 1988 and enlisted in the Air Force National Guard in 2021. A security specialist, he was not deployed during his National Guard service, records show.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.