Source: cnycentral.com 12/12/25
Two federal child porn cases ended in plea deals earlier this week.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said Jeffrey Hart of Saratoga County is now facing between 15 and 40 years in prison. Additionally, Kurt Dobler of Onondaga County is facing 10 to 20 years in prison. Both Hart and Dobler have been previously convicted of child porn charges in New York State.
Hart was convicted in Saratoga County for possession of a sexual performance of a child in 2017. Dobler was convicted in Fulton County in 2023 for the same crime and received 10 years of probation.
Both men are convicted Level 1 sex offenders. That designation means much of their personal information, such as their address or alias, is kept hidden from the public. That’s unlike Level 2 and 3 sex offenders, who have their information posted on the New York State Sex Offender Registry website and are easily accessible. They can be searched by last name.
The Level 2 and 3 designations correlate to “medium” and “high” risk of reoffending. Meanwhile, Level 1 correlates to a “low risk.”
The I-Team suspected Hart and Dobler were…

Two who will be in the 3.5% of [people who reoffend] who may have been mis assessed by those who assess individuals with sex crime convictions, if they were assessed in the first place and not just placed in T1 by crime conviction. This system is not perfect, as nothing in the material world is, but for the majority, they don’t deserve the worst of it.
They WERE level 1. And now because of their actions they can be upgraded. Just like a misdemeanor DUI is upgraded to felony on the 33rd repeated offense(🤣).
Doesn’t matter if the charge kept him from being :”publicly listed” or not. It just proof their precious registry exhibited zero publly safety component – and didn’t work as a deterrent in this guys reasoning to do it again.
Recently Arizona passed a law that puts even level 1 PFRs on the web. Because of this, I’m back on the Federal website
They were almost certainly arrested by the Feds for non-contact crimes involving downloading files. The registry wouldn’t have changed a thing. Also, you can find out these men’s criminal histories the same way you can for wife beaters, gang killers, and con artists—by searching their criminal backgrounds. Nothing was hidden unless you think we hide the criminal backgrounds of all criminals.
Can someone tell me if they would have been listed in the open on the registry how this would have prevented said crimes? (It wouldn’t have mattered). The public are complete morons in they think somehow tier 2 and 3 have police constantly breathing down their neck, tapping their phones and internet, parking in front of their house, when in reality all it really means is having to register more often, they they go on their merry way like everyone else and live their life. All the registry has done is show how stupid the American public is concerning said things and that its 100% possible more obviously unconstitutional laws can and will be passed in the future.
All this tells me is that a certain small percentage of people like to learn lessons the hard way. Let’s not be like these two, who now suddenly have the privilege of having decades of free time on their hands to think about their poor life choices.