Teen charged for allegedly downloading child pornography

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RIGBY — Investigators say a Jefferson County teen downloaded hundreds of images of child pornography from the internet.
Oscar Santos, 18, was a Rigby High School student when investigators uncovered hundreds of images of child pornography stored on a Dropbox account linked to him, according to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by EastIdahoNews.com. Santos is now charged with felony sexual exploitation of a child. If convicted on that charge, he could spend up to 10 years in prison.
A detective with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force began investigating Santos in January after receiving a tip about suspected child sex abuse material. The tip sent investigators to the Dropbox account, and they obtained a search warrant for the online cloud service.
Detectives caught up with Santos at his high school in March. He initially denied knowing anything about Dropbox, however, after being pushed for information, Santos said he had an account on the cloud storage service until it was deactivated in December. According to court documents, Santos said he believed the account was deactivated for having nude photographs of “girls about his age.” He claimed a “bot” on Snapchat sent him a link to the images and he just downloaded them.
Despite the assertion, investigators say multiple images and videos in the Dropbox were of children much younger than Santos.
“Oscar asked me if the situation would change because he was 17 when he downloaded the file,” a detective wrote. “I said maybe that would have been the case, but he held onto that file until Dropbox shut down his account in December 2020. … I explained to Oscar that maybe this would have been different if he would have told an adult right away and deleted the Dropbox account.”
Investigators sent the case to the Jefferson County prosecutors on June 14. He made an initial court appearance on Monday.
Although Santos is accused of a crime, it does not necessarily mean he committed it. Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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Source: eastidahonews.com