Mark Maczek: Speedcar racer jailed for sharing child abuse material online

A motor racing identity well-known at southeast Queensland speedways possessed material featuring children as young as six, a court has heard.

A Logan motor racing identity well-known at speedways across southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales has been jailed for downloading and sharing child exploitation material (CEM).

Munruben man Mark Anthony Maczek, 55, a FIFO fitter and driller with mining contractor Epiroc, pleaded guilty in Brisbane District Court on Wednesday to five charges.

They included three counts of possessing CEM and one count each of using a carriage service to access and make available CEM, both Commonwealth offences.

Maczek, who regularly competes in speedcar and sprintcar races at Archerfield, Lismore and Kingaroy speedways, was arrested and charged at Brisbane Domestic Airport on July 23, 2019.

Mark Anthony Maczek

He had come to police attention on the month prior, on June 27, when a criminal investigation into the sharing of CEM identified a device registered to Maczek as having shared 78 files using peer-to-peer application Shareaza.

The court heard police managed to download 15 of the shared files, some of which depicted pre-pubescent boys and girls aged between 6-12 engaged in sexual acts between each other and with an adult male.

A search warrant conducted on his parents’ Munruben residence, where he was living, on July 18, uncovered two hard-drives.

On them, they discovered a total of 536 files, a large proportion of which was animated CEM but others also depicted real children, including where they were being humiliated and forced to engage in bestiality.

Maczek was not present at the time, but was intercepted at the airport five days later upon returning from a FIFO stint in Western Australia.

He was in possession of a laptop computer which contained a further 163 CEM files, as well as evidence of sharing a number of files on the Shereaza P2P application.

Defence counsel Harry Fong told the court his client had a good work history, no previous criminal history, helped care for his elderly parents and had not reoffended since he was charged.

However, this was not enough to sway Judge Brad Farr QC, who told the court the offending was too “disgusting and abhorrent” for Maczek to not serve actual time in custody.

Maczek was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, suspended after serving three months upon entering into a $1000 good-behaviour bond and two-year probation order.

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