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Center for Missing & Exploited Children®
Success Stories
CyberTipline® Success Story
January 4, 2006
From October 7, 2005 through November 21, 2005, the CyberTipline
received 29 reports from a registered Internet Service Provider (ISP)
concerning an individual who allegedly posted pornographic images of children
to several online groups. In compliance with federal law, the ISP provided
the CyberTipline with the incident information, including the allegedly
illegal images. Exploited Child Unit analysts at NCMEC viewed the uploaded
files and determined many of the reports contained what appeared to be
pornographic images of prepubescent children. They also found a profile
containing a location in Ohio which was corroborated by the IP address
in the CyberTipline report. Analysts then forwarded all of the reports
to the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (OH ICAC) for
investigation.
Investigators with the OH ICAC reached out to the Ashtabula
Sheriff’s Office and together, the agencies launched an investigation.
Investigators quickly identified the individual associated with the reported
screen names, and also linked him to previous CyberTipline reports involving
two other screen names. Armed with a search warrant, investigators arrived
at the suspect’s home and seized his home computer where they found
approximately 1,200 sexually-oriented and sexually explicit images involving
children.
The suspect was charged with four counts of Pandering Sexual
Oriented Material Involving a Minor and Pandering Obscenity Material and
was taken into custody. As it turned out, just seven months earlier, this
suspect had been arrested for crimes involving three local victims, ages
14 through 17. At the time NCMEC began forwarding the CyberTipline reports,
he had pled guilty to six counts of Gross Sexual Imposition involving
those victims and was awaiting sentencing.
The suspect is now free on $50,000 personal recognizance
bond but faces a sentence of up to nine years’ imprisonment on the
Gross Sexual Imposition convictions; the charges stemming from the CyberTipline
reports could result in an additional eight years’ imprisonment,
along with a $15,000 fine, per count.
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