South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley speaks to reporters on Nov. 3, 2025, in Sioux Falls. Also pictured, from left, are Tiffany Stoeser, Toby Russell and Dan Miller of the state Division of Criminal Investigation. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
SIOUX FALLS — South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley says the indictment of a former driver’s license examiner should inspire legislators to make it a state crime to possess pornographic images of real adults created by artificial intelligence.
Mark Charles Rathbun, 67, was a driver’s license examiner for the state in Aberdeen until last week.
Last Thursday, he was charged with solicitation of rape, child pornography possession and unauthorized use of computer systems after an investigation by Jackley’s office. If convicted on all charges, Rathbun could face up to 37 years in prison.
At a press conference Monday in Sioux Falls, Jackley said detectives found imagery of confidential driver’s licensing information on Rathbun’s computer while doing an investigation into suspected child pornography. Rathbun allegedly took pictures of the information and shared it with third parties, for purposes not yet made clear by Jackley or court documents.
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The tip on that case, submitted by Microsoft, was one of around 3,000 that come to the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force each year.
Officers found 30 personal electronic devices in Rathbun’s home, Jackley said. One of those devices contained “over a million images,” some of which were allegedly child pornography. Other images, Jackley said, were generated by artificial intelligence to put the faces of real adults into pornographic situations.
The investigation also turned up evidence that Rathbun had asked someone to commit forcible rape against an adult victim, Jackley said. The criminal complaint against Rathbun says he’d been involved in a “domestic relationship” with the victim. The victim is identified by initials.
The unauthorized use of a computer charge applies to a victim with different initials. Jackley said he anticipates “additional victims in additional counties” to be found as the case moves forward.
Jackley would not say what the driver’s licensing information that was allegedly photographed and shared was used for. He said only that the collection of personal information from the driver’s license database and remaining charges were “part of the same scheme,” which ran from August 2024 through last month.
Possession of AI-generated child pornography has been a crime in South Dakota since 2024, when lawmakers passed a bill folding it into the definition of child pornography. At the time, Jackley pushed to create a prohibition against the possession of nonconsensual, AI-generated pornography of adults, but the bill did not pass. Distribution of such imagery is a misdemeanor, but possession remains legal under state law. Since May, the creation or publication of AI-generated, nonconsensual images of adults has been illegal under federal law.
Jackley said he hopes lawmakers will work with him to change state law and make possession of such images “a serious felony” at the state level.
He said Rathbun worked for the Department of Public Safety as a senior driver’s license examiner. A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The charges are the latest in a string of criminal cases brought against former state employees since 2024 across multiple South Dakota agencies. The most costly to taxpayers involved the misappropriation of $1.78 million by a former Department of Social Services employee.
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- 3:44 pmThis story has been updated with a correction to Mark Charles Rathbun’s age.