A Carver Middle School student was arrested on child pornography charges after he reportedly sent sexually explicit images of children to his juvenile cousin through social media.
The 14-year-old male, whose name is being withheld because he is a minor, was charged with five counts of promotion of sexual performance by a child and three counts of possession of sexual performance by a child. He was arrested 12:15 p.m. Wednesday at the school, located at 1200 Beecher St. in Leesburg.
According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement probable cause affidavit, a task force agent with the FDLE received a report in October 2021 from the Nation Center for Missing and Exploited Children that Snapchat had reported one of its users had uploaded four files of child pornography in July 2021.
Snapchat provided account information that gave the suspect’s name, email address and a birth date of Dec. 24, 1998. Snapchat also provided a Comcast IP address, and Comcast provided the address of a home on Hialeah Avenue in Leesburg, the report said.
In January 2022, NCMEC reported another incident of a digital file containing child pornography being uploaded through Instagram by an account with the same contact information as the Snapchat account. Instagram provided a HughesNet IP address. HughesNet said the specified email address is used by Denny’s restaurants across the country but was unable to specify which restaurant without more information, according to the report.
However, the suspect address from the Snapchat incident (on Hialeah Ave) is less than 1,000 feet away from the Leesburg Denny’s, which is located at 2480 Citrus Blvd. The owner of the home on Hialeah has a son who goes by the name used in the Snapchat and Instagram accounts. The juvenile was born Dec. 24, 2007, the report said.
A search warrant was executed on the residence and the FDLE agent spoke with the juvenile suspect, who admitted the accounts were his but denied sending or receiving child pornography. The suspect’s mother and older brother also denied viewing or sharing child pornography. Two cell phones were taken in the raid, according to the report.
On April 1, the suspect’s mother contacted the FDLE agent and said she wanted to share information provided by the suspect after the execution of the search warrant. The agent returned to the suspect’s home on April 4 and conducted an interview, the report said.
The suspect said he plays interactive Xbox video games with a group of people he really doesn’t know. He said a group of the other players “DDOS” websites containing child pornography, which floods the website with internet traffic to keep users from being able to access it, according to the report.
The suspect said his cousin also plays video games and started communicating with the players who DDOS the child porn websites. The cousin said he wanted to assist with the attacks, the report said.
The suspect said he found child pornography on the internet and sent it to his cousin via Snapchat and Instagram to “show him what we’re dealing with.” Meanwhile, the analysis was completed on the two phones taken during the raid. In addition to evidence of the Snapchat, Instagram and Gmail accounts associated with the child pornography, analysts found three more explicit images of children on one of the phones, according to the report.
That was enough evidence to place the suspect under arrest. No court information was available.
