PORTLAND, Maine — A man convicted of a sex crime in Maine more than 25 years ago was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court to 10 months in prison for failing to register as a sex offender in New York, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Thomas P. Cortez, 58, of College Point, New York, also was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court by Judge Jon D. Levy to five years of supervised release, according to a news release issued by the federal prosecutor’s office Wednesday.
Cortez pleaded guilty to the charge on April 5, 2016.
He was convicted in Maine in 1989 of unlawful sexual contact with a minor under 14 years old in Portland, the release said. As a result, Cortez is required to register as a sex offender for life in whatever state he is living.
In 1996, Cortez was living in New York when it instituted a sex offender registry. Between that year and March 2003, Cortez was registered in New York, the release said. In 2003, Cortez gave New York notice that he was moving back to Maine. Between 2006 and 2015, Cortez registered in Maine.
After March 2015, Cortez moved to College Point, New York, where he lived with his father and stepmother. He did not inform the Maine registry that he had moved to New York, and he did not register in that state. In December 2015, Cortez was arrested in New York and told arresting officers, among other things, that he had been living in New York for about eight months.
Information on why he was arrested in New York was not available Wednesday.
Cortez faced up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Under the prevailing federal sentencing guidelines, the recommended sentence was between 10 and 16 months.
The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the Maine Sex Offender Registry, the New York Sex Offender Registry and the Portland Police Department, the release said.