Crypto transactions gave away a Grosse Pointe Farms man in Michigan to the FBI, who found him in possession of 722,000 child pornography files. The 44-year-old Rommel Callos Baltazar was charged on July 24 over possession of child pornographic content.
The FBI got wind of the matter during another investigation involving a seller of child pornography when they discovered and identified a cryptocurrency account.
Crypto transactions for child porn
According to a Click on Detroit article, the FBI discovered the account had made three crypto transactions linked to the seller. Payments totaled $750 for transactions done on March 27, March 31, and April 3, last year.
The law enforcers then received more details about the account on April 22, 2023, which related to Baltazar. The information included his social security number, birthday, driver’s license, and address, which prompted the FBI to search his Grosse Pointe Farms home almost a year later.
The FBI apprehended several electronic gadgets including a laptop that was connected to an external drive.
According to the article, officials have so far found only “sexually suggestive or explicit material,” although they are still reviewing data from three external hard drives.
An initial review of the laptop showed 690,000 images and 32,000 videos of girls between the ages of 14 and 19 engaged in sexual acts.
The content was also categorized in hundreds of separate folders containing images and videos.
Baltazar titled the folders using the name and age of the person shown in the picture or videos in that particular folder, most of them sexually explicit images and videos of girls.
Content matched the online seller’s
According to the law enforcement agents, content on Baltazar’s gadgets matched that of the seller. There was also evidence to suggest that Baltazar visited the seller’s site about 89 times between March 27 and October 8, 2023.
The last accessed date on content was April 4, which was a day after Baltazar made his last crypto transaction to the online seller. Cases of unscrupulous individuals using cryptocurrencies to access child porn continue to surface.
The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) in conjunction with Standard Chartered published a report reviewing data and trends on the use of cryptocurrencies in the purchase of child sexual abuse material.
The organization has earlier indicated that crypto was likely to have far-reaching implications on the commercial trade of child sexual abuse material.
Crypto tracking firm, Chainalysis said abusers were getting sophisticated and using crypto to cover their tracks. The firm found that abusers use “mixers” and “private coins” to launder their profits and remain anonymous.
