Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images
For: The opinion Posted 01 Feb 2023, 17:27 pm EST
Former ABC News journalist James Gordon Meek was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography, federal authorities said Wednesday.
Meek, a 53-year-old resident of Arlington, Virginia, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with transporting child pornography, authorities said.
According to NBC News, if convicted, Meek could face a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years behind bars, authorities said.
Meek abruptly resigned from ABC last year after a raid on his home in April.
The investigation began in March 2021 when Dropbox filed a complaint with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, alleging that a user uploaded videos with its service that “police later confirmed contained child pornography,” according to a criminal complaint filed in court. District of the United States.
Investigators traced the account, under the username “James Meek,” to the suspect’s home in Arlington, the complaint alleges.
“Meek’s devices allegedly contained images showing children engaged in sexually explicit conduct and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where participants expressed excitement about the sexual abuse of children,” according to a Justice Department statement.
Meek allegedly used social media platforms to chat online with minors whom he successfully urged to send him explicit images. of themselves, authorities said.
Investigators recovered an external hard drive from the suspect with “58 images and videos of suspected child pornography” and an iPhone 6 in Meek’s bedroom with “approximately 34 images and videos of suspected child pornography,” according to the complaint.
Read more:
Killed in Washington DC subway shooting, he was an employee and died trying to stop a gunman
Shooting in Washington DC subway leaves one dead and three injured
Woman left paralyzed after falling down an airplane ladder dies when Southwest Airlines staff refuse to help her