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Former Newport Beach doctor pleads guilty to possessing child porn

February 20, 2025

A former Newport Beach gynecologist pleaded guilty Wednesday, Feb. 19, to federal charges for possessing more than 200 child porn images on several electronic devices.

Mark Albert Rettenmaier, 72, of Laguna Hills pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana to two counts of possession of child pornography. He is free from custody on $600,000 bond.

Rettenmaier will face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count during a sentencing hearing scheduled for Aug. 6. Prosecutors have recommended that he be sentenced to no more than five years in prison.

Rettenmaier’s license has expired and he is not currently eligible to practice medicine in California

On June 7, 2020, Rettenmaier uploaded 15 child porn images to an Adobe cloud-based storage system, according to the plea agreement. At least four of the images depicted a prepubescent minor and minor under the age of 12 engaging in sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

On July 22 that year, law enforcement officers seized Rettenmaier’s cellphone and two laptop during a search of his home.The cellphone contained two child pornography images and one of the laptops contained a child porn video. Additionally, 209 images of minors engaged in sexual activity were found on the other laptop, the plea agreement states

One of the images on the laptop depicted a minor engaging in bondage constituting “sadistic and masochistic” sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

Rettenmaier admitted he knowingly downloaded the child porn images and video from the internet and stored them on his personal devices, according to the plea agreement.

Rettenmaier, who was the founder and head physician of Southern California Gynecologic Oncology, cared for women with gynecologic malignancies and unusual or complicated benign pelvic disorders in Orange County for more than 35 years, according to his biography,

Previously, in a separate case, Rettenmaier was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2014 on two counts of possessing child pornography.

The indictment was handed down after technicians at a national Best Buy facility in Kentucky, known as Geek Squad City, discovered what prosecutors described as a photo of a naked, prepubescent girl while fixing Rettenmaier’s broken computer and notified local FBI agents.

Rettenmaier’s attorneys challenged the legality of the computer search, leading U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney to hold hearings, during which the defense could call witnesses to explore the relationship between the FBI and Best Buy.

During those hearings, several Best Buy employees testified that they occasionally run across what they believe to be child pornography in the course of their repairs. The employees said they believed they had a “legal and moral” obligation to report their findings to law enforcement.

An FBI agent acknowledged paying some Best Buy employees $500 for some of the tips, but denied asking them to do anything outside of their normal work duties. Carney ultimately found that the Best Buy techs did nothing wrong.

The child pornography charges against Rettenmaier were dismissed after Carney threw out much of the evidence because of “false and misleading statements” made by an FBI agent.

Carney also found that a request for a search warrant for Rettenmaier’s home failed to note the image found by Best Buy technicians that led to the investigation was in an area on his computer where deleted files are kept, so he may not have been aware of it.

The judge also focused on the testimony of the FBI agent who first examined Rettenmaier’s computer, and who acknowledged during courtroom testimony that the photo the techs found did not “by itself” constitute child pornography. The agent described the image as depicting an underage girl on her knees on a bed wearing a choker-type collar.

While the image may have been “distasteful and disturbing,” the judge determined it was not child pornography but instead child erotica, “the viewing of which is not unlawful,” Carney said during a hearing.

Staff writer Sean Emery contributed to this article.

Orange County Register

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