A Ford City man previously convicted of distributing child pornography faces dozens of felony counts after, investigators say, a sexually explicit photo of an underage girl appeared on a work computer that was synced to a laptop in his home.

Matthew J. Lightcap, 40, of the 300 block of Third Avenue, was charged by state police on Thursday with 50 counts of child pornography and one count of criminal use of a communications facility. All are felonies.

Lightcap was being detained in the Armstrong County Jail in lieu of a $75,000 cash bond, according to court records. He faces a preliminary hearing on Friday before District Judge J. Gary DeComo.

Police wrote in a criminal complaint that on Dec. 7 Lightcap was off work from his job at a logistics company in Pittsburgh because of car problems when his home laptop synchronized with a company computer shortly before 8 p.m.

When computers are synchronized, the same data appears in two or more locations.

The image was discovered the following day when an employee turned on the company computer and the pornographic image appeared as the background, the complaint said.

The company’s IT department determined that the photo wasn’t downloaded; rather it appeared on both computers because the Microsoft software installed on the devices was synced through the personal email address Lightcap provided when he was hired, according to the complaint.

Company officials reported the incident to Ford City police. They gave an officer the company computer as evidence and the information required to identify the name of the file where the images were being stored, the complaint said.

The officer seized two laptops and multiple cellphones and other electronics from Lightcap’s home after getting a search warrant, police said.

While being questioned at the Ford City police station, Lightcap admitted to having child pornography on his computer in a file he had named kidz-index, which matched the information provided to police by the company, the complaint said.

Lightcap told the officer that he collected the images from the dark web but did not distribute them to others, according to his arrest papers.

He told her that he got the laptop and started collecting sexually explicit images of children about seven years ago after being released from probation for a 2010 child pornography conviction, the complaint said.

Investigators said 1,172 images of prepubescent children of both genders engaging in sexual activity were found on Lightcap’s laptop.

Lightcap pleaded guilty in York County in 2010 to two felony child pornography charges. He was sentenced to one to 20 months in jail and five years of probation, according to court records.

Lightcap was not ordered to register as a sex offender according to court documents and a search of the state’s Megan’s Law database.

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