Ephrata man charged with possession of child pornography

EPHRATA — A Ephrata man has allegedly been caught with over 350 videos of child pornography.

Grant County prosecutors charged Randy Cameron, 54, of Ephrata, with three counts of first-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

In mid-April Google discovered one of its users had uploaded one or more files of suspected child pornography to the Internet on a Google+ account. Google reportedly made additional discoveries in regard to suspected child pornography and made a report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), with the reports later forwarded to the Seattle Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, according to police records.

Police later received a search warrant for an email address that allegedly belonged to Cameron. A review of the contents of the Google+ photo account belonging to the email address revealed 994 video files, of which 534 were reportedly duplicates.

“I viewed the remaining 460 MP4 video files and found approximately 375 videos to be depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and/or rape of a child,” wrote an SPD officer.

In addition to the videos, police recovered 1,970 photos on the account. 20 of the images reportedly had children in them. Police also reportedly recovered several pictures and videos of Cameron on the email account.

On Oct. 25 Dropbox Inc. discovered one of its users had uploaded one or more files of suspected child pornography to the Internet. Dropbox made a report to the NCMEC, who documented the complaint and forwarded it to the SPD. The SPD discovered the report was related to the ongoing investigation into Cameron’s suspected crimes. The screen/user name for the Dropbox account was reportedly traced back to Cameron and police learned Cameron had uploaded the images from an RV park in the 2500 block of Basin Street Southwest in Ephrata, according to police records. On Monday, SPD officers, officers from the Quincy Police Department, and officers with the Ephrata Police Department served a residential search warrant at Cameron’s residence on Basin Street.

Cameron told police he uses his phone to access the Internet through Wi-Fi provided by the RV park he lives at. He reportedly gave police an email address, which had allegedly been used to register and verify other email addresses that were used to upload child pornography.

“Randy stated he knew what our visit was about and stated he had a porn addiction,” wrote an officer. “Randy stated he had been talking to his counselor about this addiction and she had advised him about not speaking to the police without a lawyer.”

Police reportedly found pornographic images of children on Cameron’s cell phone. One of the images reportedly depicts a girl between 3 and 4 years old engaged in a sexually explicit act, according to police records.