Police discovered thousands of child sex abuse images on electronic devices after a raid on a house, a court heard.

Lee Adams stored the videos and still photos in a Dropbox account, in Mega Cloud Storage and on a mobile phone.

Officers executed a search warrant at the 47-year-old’s home in Cades Orchard, Painters Forstal, on the morning of October 4, 2017, and took away the devices.

Prosecutor Fiona Ryan explained to a jury at Maidstone Crown Court on Wednesday that files stored in cloud accounts could be accessed easily on any device capable of using the internet.

“The police looked into his accounts,” said Miss Ryan. “A huge quantity of material was found. None of the images had been deleted. They were immediately accessible.”

The Mega account contained over 3,000 files, while the Dropbox account had less than 100. The images and videos were in all categories of seriousness. One search term used was “paedo mum”.

There were also two extreme pornographic images of showing adults performing sex acts with animals.

“He suggested they could have been hacked. He said he had never looked at or sought out child pornography...” Prosecutor Fiona Ryan

Miss Ryan told jurors that they would not have to see any of the images or videos involved in the case.

The iPad contained thousands of thumbnail images, 711 of which involved indecency with children.

“Mr Adams was interviewed by police on three occasions,” said Miss Ryan. “In short, he said he had no idea there was any indecent material in those storage accounts.

“He suggested they could have been hacked. He said he had never looked at or sought out child pornography.”

Adams had a further cloud storage application on his phone, which was used to view images of children.

“It is perfectly simple,” said Miss Ryan. “He stored them and used them on his iPad and phone. He could access them any time. That means he is in possession of them.

“He maintains he didn’t put them there and has never used indecent images of children. If he didn’t know they were in his accounts he is not guilty.”

Adams, whose bail address is in Charing, near Ashford, denied 12 charges of possessing indecent photos of children, one of possessing a prohibited image and one of possessing an extreme pornographic image.

He was convicted of all charges and sentence was adjourned for reports until February 18. Bail was continued.

If you are concerned about what you are looking at online, or the online behaviour of someone you know, you can call the confidential and anonymous Stop It Now helpline on 0808 1000 900 for advice, support and help to stop.

Or visit get-help.stopitnow.org.uk to find out more.