Enrique J. Tovar, 19, Waupaca, was charged Nov. 16 with nine counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of exposing a child to harmful material.
On April 15, New London Police Officer Josh Wilson filed a subpoena for records from Charter Communications for an Internet Protocol (IP) address allegedly involved in downloading child porn.
Wilson had been targeting peer-to-peer networks to identify offers and the sharing of child porn. Charter identified the suspect IP address as belonging to a Waupaca man living with his two teenage daughters and Tovar on Oak Street.
Waupaca police subsequently seized the computer and reported that it actually belonged to Tovar.
Manawa Police Officer Paul Benzschawel began the process of imaging Tovar’s hard drive. He found that the Windows operating system was registered to a “Rico.” They also found that a peer-to-peer file-sharing program was installed under this account and that the Globally Unique Identifier number that investigators had uncovered earlier matched the number found on the hard drive.
Benzschawel began a process called data carving to locate deleted files. He found evidence of child porn that had been saved on a shared file under Rico’s account.
According to the criminal complaint, the photos included victims as young as 4 to 5 years old, some of whom have been identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Tovar also allegedly showed a pornographic video to the two teenage girls he was living with.
If convicted of possession of child pornography, Tovar faces up to 25 years in prison.