Columbia man arrested for child porn
A national watchdog group helps Mid-Missouri cyber police bust a Columbia man for child porn.
30-year-old Jonathan Hillyard appeared before a judge Thursday after the Boone County Cyber Crimes task force arrested him for having multiple child porn pictures in his email account.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sent a tip to the Cyber Crimes Task Force on September 16th.
Since then, officers on the task force have been investigating Hillyard’s email account. And they found about nine illegal images with children under the age of 18.
They also traced the IP address of the uploaded illegal image to Hillyard’s home.
Wednesday, investigators searched Hillyard’s home and Hillyard admitted to receiving child pornography from random internet users for about six months.
Police said all known or reported child pornography images have a digital signature that brings up a red flag to internet providers.
In this case, a red flag popped up to Google which then filed the complaint with the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children.
Tracy Perkins, Boone Co. Cyber Crimes Task Force: “The national center, they actually have the national clearing house for all identified children of pornography. And it’s hundreds of thousands.”
“And so they have those particular digital signatures in their database, and then that database then logs if there’s something that crosses that says is is a known identified child.”
Hillyard is in the Boone County Jail on a $10,000 cash bond. The court has ordered Hillyard to stay off the internet and not to have contact with any person younger than 18.
Hillyard will appear in court again next month.
