US Executive Being Investigated For Purchasing Child Porn on Darknet

US executive and linguistics expert James Kirk Jones was arrested earlier this week after investigators discovered he was creating a collection of child pornography obtained from the darknet.

Upon the issuance of a warrant, local law enforcement officers and investigators seized the laptop, mobile phone and hard drive of Jones. Within the local storage of his laptop, investigators found 39 gigabytes of child pornography. According to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of India’s Telangana state, the child pornography collection of jones was extended to his mobile phone and hard drive, where more footages of child pornography were found.

CID investigators have gathered sufficient evidence to charge Jones for the illegal possession of child pornography. In the upcoming weeks, CID investigators in collaboration with local law enforcement agencies will look into other accomplices or potential clients of Jones who purchased child pornography from Jones and his vendors on the darknet.

Based on the activities of Jones in India over the past few years, Telangana state police have said that prosecutors are also exploring the possibility of charging Jones for the distribution of child pornography as they found a list of 490 individuals on a peer-to-peer file sharing network known as GigaTribe who communicated directly with Jones in regards to his child pornography collection.

According to GigaTribe, the company is active in assisting local authorities or investigators in looking into the storage or sharing of illegal content such as child pornography. The GigaTribe platform has a section wherein users can report the distribution of illegal content as well as a department which handles such criminal activities.

Soumya Mishra, CID inspector general told local publications including Times of India that the agency have already reached out to GigaTribe to obtain personal information of users which were in direct contact with Jones. Mishra further emphasized that anyone who received any footages of child pornography from Jones will be arrested and charged accordingly.

“Jones’ activities in India are being investigated. If any of the people with whom Jones was sharing the child sexual abuse material are in India, they will also be arrested,” said Mishra.

In the initial report of the CID, it was revealed that the laptop, external hard disk and mobile phone of Jones possessed over 29,000 images and videos of child abuse. Mishra and the investigators at CID firmly believes that the mass collection of child pornography was distributed to a large group of people, including users of GigaTribe.

CID investigators are also looking into a private group on Twitter, which is suspected of acquiring child pornography from Jones directly. If Twitter complies with the Indian police and provides necessary information of the private group, investigators will most likely find hundreds of individuals connected to Jones and his operation.