Police found more than 1,000 indecent images of children after searching the home of a 37-year-old man, a court heard.
Martin Hendron claimed to have come across them while surfing the internet for adult pornography.
Hendron, now living at Cockholm Crescent, Stow, appeared on indictment and admitted possession of indecent images of children at his then home at Kittlegairy Road in Peebles between June 2007 and June 2013.
The majority of the images found on Hendron’s computer were level one, which depict pornographic posing with no sexual activity.
Prosecutor Tessa Bradley told an earlier hearing: “Intelligence was received by police in June 2013 that someone accessing the internet through a connection at the address had been accessing indecent images of child abuse.”
Police, armed with a search warrant, called at the accused’s Peebles home at 8.50am on June 11. Hendron and his wife were present, and a laptop and external hardrive were seized.
Ms Bradley went on: “In excess of 1,000 images of children were recovered, and also search terms indicative of actually looking for images of children. A number of images were found in the recycle bin, indicating he had tried to delete them.”
She said the search terms included “Lolita teen” and “nudist kids”.
During police interview, Hendron claimed to have seen some indecent images a number of years ago, but deleted them when he realised what they were.
He denied actually searching for them.
“He said he was unaware that ‘Lolita teen’ would bring back paedophilic material. He confirmed he owned the laptop and said that he came across these images while searching the internet for adult pornography.
The vast majority of the images were graded at level one, with five at level two, and three at level four,” concluded Ms Bradley.
Mat Patrick, defending, said his client had resigned from his employment.
At Selkirk Sheriff Court on Monday, Hendron was sentenced to a community payback order of two years and four months, with 200 hours of unpaid work to be completed within 12 months.
He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years.