28 Southland Men Are Charged in Child Porn Probe

Federal authorities said Wednesday that a yearlong pornography investigation has led to charges against 28 Southern California men, including 21 from Orange County.

Nine of the men have agreed to plead guilty in coming weeks to one count each of possession of child pornography, said Wayne Gross, chief of the U.S. attorney’s office in Santa Ana. The other 19 suspects were indicted by federal grand juries in Santa Ana and Los Angeles and will be arraigned in federal court in coming weeks on charges of possessing and/or distributing child pornography, Gross said.

Among those named in the indictments, returned last week, are a security guard at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Indio, a school bus driver in Lucerne Valley and a boys’ soccer coach in Conejo Valley.

Gross said the nearly simultaneous filing of charges against the 28 men represented the largest single strike by federal agents against child pornography in the U.S. District Court’s central district of California, which serves Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Additionally, 22 other people who had served time in custody as sex offenders have been rearrested after being identified after their release as foreign nationals. They face deportation proceedings, officials said.

The charges against the 28 followed an investigation that involved the Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, Brea, Newport Beach, Irvine, Anaheim and Cypress police departments and the Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino sheriff’s departments. In one case, police were alerted by a computer technician after a suspect brought his computer in for service; another man was identified following a tip that he was videotaping children at a school playground.

Gross said some photographs, found through online chat rooms, were not of “children walking naked on a beach” but instead were vulgar depictions of babies and toddlers.

The possession charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison; the penalty for distribution ranges from five to 20 years.