AUBURN — A Kennebunkport man was ordered to serve nine months in jail Tuesday after pleading guilty to charges he secretly recorded young girls in the nude while he was employed as their live-in nanny in Greene.

Max Talmage, 35, was also accused of using AI to create child sex abuse images of the girls and leaving loaded guns unsecured around the house.

Talmage pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of possessing sexually explicit material of a minor under 12 years old and endangering the welfare of a child.

As a result of a plea arrangement, charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and violations of privacy were dismissed.

Talmage was ordered to serve nine months behind bars, but was given a stay until August, when he will be required to report to jail.

During his investigation, Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Detective Nate McNally said he found a computer cache loaded with child sex abuse images. Examination of one laptop alone revealed at least 450 cached images of child sexual abuse involving children 6 to 12 years old, McNally wrote in a court affidavit.

Also found, police said, were images of a topless 14-year-old girl that were recorded with a hidden camera Talmage had set up in a bathroom at the home in Greene. That girl and four other children were in Talmage’s care at the time, according to a court affidavit.

The allegations came to light in July 2025 when the mother of the children called police to report she had found an external hard drive connected to Talmage’s computer.

On the drive, according to police, the woman found a folder named “Nudfy Video Experiment” containing the names of her two daughters, 11 and 14 years old.

The mother of the children was described in the court document as Talmage’s roommate with whom she had a sexual relationship. With the approval of the woman’s husband, Talmage had been brought in to serve as nanny to the kids.

Talmage originally told police that the AI pictures of the children were created by mistake. He had clicked on an advertisement for a product that created AI nude images, he said, and accidentally linked it to a folder containing pictures of the kids.

While searching the home on Grey Road in Greene, police said they found numerous firearms, including an AR-15 and two other rifles along with a 12-gauge shotgun and five handguns “laying around” in the home.

During forensic analysis of Talmage’s computers and accessories, police said they found evidence from hidden spy cameras Talmage had used in both Maine and in Virginia where he had previously lived.

“This camera captured private images/videos of a minor under the age of 12 at both the Virginia resident and the Maine residence,” McNally wrote in his affidavit.

The detective was able to link some of those images and videos to the home in Greene by matching footage backgrounds with the paint color and style of the bathroom.

Police said they also found evidence that Talmage had shared some of his footage of children during chats on the website Omegle — chats in which Talmage would claim to be a teenage boy while talking to other kids.

During his investigation, McNally consulted with police in Kennebunk, where Talmage had worked at a preschool, and with investigators in Virginia.

The Department of Health and Human Services was notified at the start of the investigation.

As part of his sentence, Talmage will be on the state sex offender registry for 25 years following his release from jail.