Monday, July 27, 2009

More Individuals to Be Charged with Child Porn

An FBI investigation is cracking down on child pornography in the Fort Wayne area. It's not clear how long the special investigation has been going on, but it's been pretty successful so far.

Last week, police executed 14 federal search warrants and arrested three local men.

Monday afternoon, members of the FBI Cyber Crime task force, along with the U.S. Attorney's office announced details of the FBI probe.

It involves a federal grant that funds a program called Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC).

The ICAC task force brings together state, local and federal agencies to attack the problem and investigate the peer-to-peer file sharing programs that enable and spread child porn.

"We're specifically looking for individuals to target so that we can marshall all our resources into this area and have an impact," said Supervisory Special Agent Steve Kelly with the FBI Cyber Crime Task Force.

"We will be announcing more individuals charged in the greater Fort Wayne area in the next several months and we're just going to continue to keep putting our resources toward this problem,"added U.S Attorney David Capp, of the Northern District of Indiana.

The most recent arrest from the FBI probe is 33-year-old Christopher Ramirez of Fort Wayne. Ramirez was arrested Thursday. He's charged with the production of child pornography. Police found numerous images of child porn on his lap-top computer and digital camera.

Also last week, NewsChannel 15 reported that two other men were arrested for child porn-related charges.

64 year-old Bernard Squires is accused of distributing child pornography. Squires served as Chaplain for the Whitley County Sheriff's Department and is a pastor in Columbia City.

The other man was Brian Schinbeckler, also from Fort Wayne. Court documents show police found more than 200 video files containing child porn on his computer.

FBI agents stress this is just the tip of the iceberg. Agents with the Cyber Crime Task Force expect many more charges and arrests to come in the next few weeks.

No comments:

Post a Comment