GROSSE POINTE FARMS, Mich. – Cryptocurrency payments helped FBI brokers uncover {that a} Grosse Pointe Farms man had 722,000 highly organized child porn files.
Rommel Callos Baltazar, 44, of Grosse Pointe Farms, is accused of receiving and possessing child pornography in a felony grievance filed July 25, 2024.
Hyperlink to cryptocurrency payments
FBI brokers stated they had been investigating a recognized vendor of child pornography after they recognized a particular cryptocurrency account.
The account had made three separate payments to accounts linked to that vendor: on March 27, 2023, March 31, 2023, and April 3, 2023, officers stated.
The payments had been for a mixed $750.
On April 21, 2023, brokers stated they acquired info for the account that linked it to Baltazar, together with his birthday, Social Safety Quantity, driver’s license, and deal with.
That led to a search of his dwelling in Grosse Pointe Farms almost a 12 months later.
Child porn discovered at dwelling
Baltazar was the one individual on the dwelling when it was searched on April 11, 2024. Brokers seized digital units, together with a laptop computer related to an exterior onerous drive.
Officers are nonetheless reviewing about three terabytes of information from the exterior onerous drive. To this point, they’ve discovered solely “sexually suggestive or express materials,” they stated.
The photographs and movies on the onerous drive had been categorized in tons of of separate folders. These folders had been titled with the title and age of the individual proven within the footage and movies, within the format “title (age).”
A few of the folders contained sexually express footage and movies of women.
Officers stated among the movies on the onerous drive have been matched by the FBI with content material that was offered by the net vendor referenced earlier within the grievance.
The creation and last-accessed dates on the content material had been on April 4, 2024, which is sooner or later after Baltazar made the ultimate cryptocurrency fee to the net vendor.
An preliminary evaluate of the laptop computer introduced up about 690,000 footage and 32,000 movies, a lot of which appeared to indicate women and younger girls between the ages of 14 and 19 engaged in sexual acts.
Officers stated additionally they discovered proof that Baltazar had visited the net vendor’s web site 89 occasions between March 27, 2023, and Oct. 8, 2023. His visits included the “find out how to purchase content material” part.
Conclusion
The felony grievance concludes there’s possible trigger that Baltazar acquired and possessed child pornography.
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