A Bedford man who possessed at least 2 million images and videos of child pornography was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison.

Upon release, Paul Hicks, 68, must register as a sex offender and spend the rest of his life under supervised release, according to the sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Reed C. O'Connor. Hicks pleaded guilty in March to one count of receipt of child pornography.

An agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Hicks' collection of child pornography, which included videos and pictures of children under 6 years old, was the largest such collection that anyone in her office had ever seen. Some of the children were infants and toddlers.

Hicks admitted that as of January 2007 while living on Marsh Lane in Carrollton he had stored more than 125,000 pornographic images, but investigators determined the number was in the millions. Hicks said he downloaded the images from child pornography Web sites. Some of the images depicted sadistic and masochistic acts.