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| In this Jan. 23, 2014 photo, Mount Pleasant, N.Y. police Chief Brian Fanelli and his wife Sonja exit Federal Court in White Plains, N.Y. A five-week investigation has resulted in charges against at least 70 men and one woman in the New York City area in what officials called one of the largest-ever roundups locally of people who anonymously trade child porn over the Internet. Authorities decided to launch the operation after the arrest of Fanelli, who pleaded not guilty this week to federal charges of knowingly receiving and distributing child pornography. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- Seemingly respectable members of the mainstream - a police officer, a
paramedic, a rabbi, an airline pilot, an architect, a Boy Scout leader -
were caught using the Internet to collect and trade child pornography,
federal officials said Wednesday.
The six were
among 70 New York City-area men and one woman charged as the result of a
five-week investigation by the Homeland Security Investigations arm of
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some
of the defendants, using search terms like "real child rape" and
"family sex," had downloaded thousands of disturbing images on their
computers inside suburban homes they shared with their families. The
lone woman was accused of allowing another suspect to videotape her son.
Federal
and state officials who announced the arrests on Wednesday called it
one of the largest local roundups ever of people who seek to anonymously
share the porn online - and a stark reminder that they come from all
walks of life.
"This operation puts the lie to
the classic, stereotypical profile that child predators are nothing
more than unemployed drifters," said James Hayes, head of ICE's New York
office.
Authorities say an alarming number of
the defendants held positions of trust that gave them access to young
children. The Boy Scout leader also coached a youth baseball team. The
rabbi home-schooled his children and others. Another person used hidden
cameras to secretly film his children's friends.
The
operation was meant to send a message to producers and consumers of
child porn "that they are going to be identified, that they are going to
be found," Hayes said. "Those people need to look themselves in the
mirror and do whatever they need to do to stop this activity."
Authorities
say advances in technology and computer capacity have allowed
child-porn collectors to easily amass vast troves of images and to
exchange files with each other directly. The New York effort resulted in
the seizure of nearly 600 desktop and laptop computers, tablets,
smartphones and other devices containing massive amounts of storage.
Agents
were still examining the devices to locate and catalog evidence, an
arduous task that could result in more arrests. The National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children also will have analysts review the images
to see whether it can identify children using databases of known
victims.
"We refer to each of these images as a
crime scene photo because that's exactly what they are," said John
Ryan, the organization's chief executive officer.
Authorities
decided to launch the operation after the arrest in January of the
Mount Pleasant, New York, police chief, who pleaded not guilty this week
to federal charges of knowingly receiving and distributing child
pornography. Court papers allege that Brian Fanelli told investigators
he began looking at child porn as research before it grew into a
"personal interest."
In May, agents on
computers created a digital dragnet with the same tactics used in the
Fanelli case: Agents posed as collectors of child porn who wanted to
anonymously trade it through file-sharing programs others use to share
pirated hit music and movies. Once given access to personal libraries of
child porn photos and videos, the agents identified the numeric IP
addresses of the sources of the material.
The
next step as was to subpoena Internet service providers to obtain names
associated with the IP addresses. The investigators narrowed the list
down to 100 people who were the most active and recent traders, and
obtained search and arrest warrants.
