Maricopa Teen Caught With 500 Child-Porn Videos and Pictures After Year-Long FBI Investigation

A year-long child-porn investigation led FBI agents this summer to a Maricopa teenager with a personal stash of 500 videos and pictures of sexually exploited children.

The case was outlined in court records filed yesterday by the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office, which requests the forfeiture of computer equipment seized from the kid’s home.

The kid, who’s either 17 or 18, hasn’t been charged yet, so we’ll hold off on naming him. Suffice to say, it looks like he’s in big trouble.

FBI agents in the Innocent Images Unit in San Diego noticed back in May
of 2010 that a GigaTribe user who went by “Boy44gy2” was sharing files
containing child porn. Over the course of months, agents downloaded the
user’s files and reviewed them, then cyber-tracked the user.

Seeing that the Cox Communications connection originated from a man’s
home in Tempe, local FBI agents were put on the case. They also were
able to download child porn from the Boy44gy2 account.

A renewed check on the Cox subscriber showed the man had moved to
Maricopa. As more months went by, agents confirmed that file-sharing had
been facilitated by the man’s Cox account, that his home Wi-Fi was
secured (which rules out the idea that someone was using his connection)
and other identifying info.

On July 28, agents knocked on the door of the Maricopa home. They first
interviewed the father — and it quickly became clear that they needed
to interview his son.

The teen ‘fessed up to sharing the child porn, even though he knew it
was illegal — and admitted to possessing illegal images on his
computer, records show.

Agents seized two laptops, a desktop computer, two SD chips and a thumb
drive. The father petitioned in September to get some of the equipment
back, which led to the official forfeiture claim filed yesterday.

The FBI declined comment on the case.