An 83-year-old pensioner has admitted amassing what authorities believe is the largest collection of child sexual abuse material ever seized by police in Scotland. Let me walk you through the details of the case heard at Falkirk Sheriff Court.

Alan MacPherson, from Stenhousemuir, pleaded guilty to downloading, possessing, and distributing indecent material across a period spanning more than 14 years, between 1 January 2012 and 20 January 2026. The sheer volume of material uncovered by investigators is staggering.

When officers raided MacPherson's home in 2025, they uncovered over two million images stored across various electronic devices. More than 805,000 of those files have been formally identified as depicting child sexual abuse, with much of the content categorised at the most serious level, Category A.

The operation to catch MacPherson began after investigators tracked an IP address used to distribute the material online. Prosecutor Rachel Wallace told the court that in July 2025, MacPherson posted multiple Category A images of child sexual exploitation during an online chat with an undercover police officer. Although he used a messaging application designed to preserve anonymity, officers traced the activity directly to his address and executed an early morning raid.

Altogether, Police Scotland seized nine devices from the property, including computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, external drives, and a USB stick. Indecent images of children were detected on every single device seized.

Because of the overwhelming volume of data, investigators have only been able to conduct a full examination on five of the nine devices. On just one storage drive, officers graded 698,924 child sexual abuse files, while nearly 1.4 million images remained ungraded on a single separate device. Court heard that the victims depicted were girls, mostly aged between nine and 15, with at least one child possibly as young as seven.

Addressing the court, prosecutor Rachel Wallace explained: "Police have advised us this is quite possibly the largest collection of child sexual abuse material ever seen by Police Scotland." Following his arrest, MacPherson, who is a first offender, told interviewing officers that he had spent years searching online for indecent images of children "for his own personal gratification".

Defending MacPherson, solicitor-advocate Stephen Biggam outlined the pensioner's failing health, telling the court his client is deaf and suffers from macular degeneration. Biggam stated that since the initial arrest, MacPherson had "continued to go about his business and had not been any centre of attraction in the community, as is his way."

The proceedings prompted Sheriff Craig Harris to take the unusual step of warning members of the public in the gallery that they could leave the courtroom if needed, noting that the details of the case might be "difficult for some people to hear."

Refusing bail, Sheriff Harris remanded MacPherson into custody and placed him on the Sex Offenders Register. The sheriff told him: "The offences are far too serious for me to proceed without a report. Given the nature and the scale and the time over which the offences have been committed, the risk you pose when you are at liberty, and the likely outcome by way of sentence, you must now be remanded into custody."

As it stands, we do not know the full contents of the unexamined devices due to the vast backlog of files, and a final sentence has yet to be determined. Background reports have been ordered ahead of MacPherson's next court appearance, scheduled for 8 September.

I'll be following this one — check back for updates as sentencing approaches.