Pensioner had 'largest hoard' of child abuse images to be seized in Scotland
Alan MacPherson, 83, from Stenhousemuir, amassed two million indecent images, believed to be the biggest such collection ever seized by Scottish Police.
An 83-year-old man from Stenhousemuir, Alan MacPherson, possessed what authorities believe to be the most extensive collection of child sexual abuse images ever seized by Scottish police, according to a recent court hearing. On a single device, the court heard that officers managed to categorize 698,924 images, most of which were deemed to be the most serious Category A.
Officers executed a raid on MacPherson's home after identifying his IP address was used to share explicit images and videos of child sexual exploitation online. He was arrested during an early morning operation and admitted to downloading, possessing, and distributing such material over a period of more than 14 years, from January 1, 2012, to January 20, 2026. MacPherson was also placed on the sex offenders register.
The sheer volume of the collection overwhelmed police capacity to examine and categorize the material, with nearly 1.4 million images left ungraded on one device alone. Five devices were examined, with the others containing a total of over two million images. The victims were mostly young girls aged nine to 15, but at least one was possibly as young as seven.
The court heard that MacPherson had been searching online for years for indecent images of children for his personal gratification. An undercover police officer detected him during an online chat where MacPherson shared multiple Category A images. MacPherson pleaded guilty to all charges and was remanded in custody pending further reports.
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