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OAKLAND — A Richmond resident has been charged in federal court with distributing thousands of files depicting child sexual abuse in a private chatroom that reportedly required an entrance fee and was advertised by social media users, court records show.
Tarik Lamont Johnson, 23, was charged last week with child pornography distribution, a federal offense that carries a minimum sentence of five years in federal prison and a maximum of life. He remained in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin after a federal magistrate ordered him detained last week, court records show.
Johnson was arrested after an undercover investigation that was initiated last October by an agent with Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agent determined a user of the cloud-based messaging app Telegram was distributing child pornography in a chatroom that required a $25 entrance fee. The chatroom was advertised by users of several Instagram accounts, some of which depicted clothed pre-pubescent children and had links to the Telegram chatroom.
During the investigation, the Telegram user allegedly sent an undercover HSI agent a file containing 500 gigabytes of child pornography, including 6,498 videos and 12,703 still images depicting minors being sexually abused, according to the complaint. Johnson was identified as the user based on his IP address and information tracked to Google accounts he allegedly operated, authorities say. Investigators also allegedly linked photos of him on one of the Instagram accounts to his Texas drivers license.
Authorities reviewed some of the files. One showed a toddler being sexually abused by a man, and others depicted kids as young as 6 years old being abused, according to the complaint. They also linked the Telegram account to a PayPal account that received approximately 30 payments between March and October of this year, the complaint alleges.
Johnson made his first court appearance last week and was advised of the charges, but did not enter a plea, court records show.
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