A suburban Detroit teenager is charged with distributing child porn online, and it took a tip from German police to help catch him.
He was arrested following nearly a yearlong probe which started when German National Police stumbled on a Net site distributing child porn, according to Detroit-area law enforcement. They weren't sure how long the site had been active, but tell APBNews the boy apparently ran it alone.
The German police contacted American customs officials, APBNews says, and the customs officials tracked the child porn site to the boy's home. His equipment was seized last fall, and warrants for his arrest came last week.
According to APBNews, the 16-year-old ran it from his bedroom, without his parents' knowledge. "One of the messages we've been actively trying to get out through our computer crimes unit," says Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard to APBNews, "is parents need to be aware of what their children are seeing or doing on the computer."
The boy is charged with five counts of distributing child sexually abusive material over the Internet, APBNews says, and he's in his parents' custody pending further court action.
Bouchard expressed appreciation to German police. "It is good to know that Internet safety goes far beyond our geographical borders," he tells APBNews.
Bouchard, in fact, assembled a computer crime unit thirteen months ago. It has also led to the recent arrest of a 30-something man who supposedly believed he was talking in an online chat room to a woman who would "rent" him her 13-year-old daughter, APBNews says. Authorities arrested this man when he showed up at a restaurant carrying a bagful of sex toys.
"Unfortunately, a very prevalent activity on the Internet is people seeking and stalking other people," Bouchard tells the online crime news service. "It's a situation we feel we have to respond to. In some ways, the Internet has become the pedophile's playground."
