A 31-year-old Homestead man was arrested and charged with sexual exploitation of a child after Maricopa police investigators found hundreds of pornographic images of children on his cell phone.

Lucas A. Scott faces between 21 and 35 years in prison.

“The photographs mentioned were of children nude or partially nude posing in sexual and lewd manners,” the police department’s probable cause statement said.

MPD launched its investigation in March after it received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children stating the agency was informed by the internet data storage provider Dropbox that Scott was in possession of a video “believed to depict child pornography.”

On July 31 MPD obtained a digital file from Dropbox that provided 1,895 images and 38 videos identified as child sexual abuse material. The ages of the children in the photos and videos were redacted in the police document.

MPD obtained a search warrant for Scott’s vehicle and found his cell phone inside it.

“During a forensic preview of Scott’s cell phone located in his vehicle, hundreds of images of children … were located on his device,” MPD investigators stated.