Schaumburg Man Arrested for Sexual Exploitation of Georgia Youth

Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and James H. Robertson, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Buffalo office of the FBI, were joined today by Brian S. Howerton, Chief of the Schaumburg, Illinois Police Department (SPD), in announcing the arrest of a Schaumburg man for the sexual exploitation of a Georgia youth.

DAVID KYLE MURCH, age 19, of the northwest suburb, was arrested Sunday morning, without incident, by FBI special agents and officers of the SPD in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. MURCH was charged in a criminal complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York with one count of traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual contact with a minor, which is a felony offense.

According to the complaint, a 15-year-old female from Georgia was reported missing by her family on Saturday while she was visiting her grandparents in Niagara Falls, New York. Local police and the Buffalo FBI began investigating at which time it was determined that the missing youth had been engaged in an online relationship with an adult male from the Chicago area. Additional investigation identified the adult male with whom the missing youth was having the online relationship as MURCH and as the individual who allegedly transported her from New York to Illinois, where she was recovered unharmed inside MURCH’s suburban Chicago apartment. She has since been reunited with her family.

The victim was located when bank records showed unauthorized transactions on the grandfather’s debit card on Saturday morning at various locations in western New York and Ohio while cellular phone records showed the victim’s phone was being used in Schaumburg on Sunday morning.

MURCH appeared before Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in Chicago, earlier today, at which time he was formally charged. MURCH was ordered held without bond and was also ordered removed to Buffalo to face the charge pending against him. Until then, MURCH will be held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. If convicted of the charge filed against him, MURCH faces a possible sentence of up to thirty (30) years' incarceration.

The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Copies of the criminal complaint filed in this case are available from the Chicago FBI’s press office at (312) 829-1199.