FBI Arrests Chicago Man on Child Pornography Charge

CHICAGO—A 24-year-old Chicago man was arrested on a federal charge of possession of child pornography following the execution of a search warrant that resulted in the discovery of alleged child pornography images on a computer found at his residence. The arrest and charge were announced today by Robert J. Shields, Jr., Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Zachary T. Fardon, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Devin Jones, of 1810 West Jackson, was taken into custody without incident yesterday by special agents and investigators assigned to the Chicago FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force. Jones was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago with one count of possession of child pornography, which is a felony offense. He appeared yesterday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason and was ordered held until his next court appearance, which is scheduled for Monday, October 28, 2013.

According to the complaint, another individual under investigation gave permission to an FBI agent to access an e-mail account used by that individual, and the agent noted an exchange of six e-mails with another e-mail account, kingexcellence@gmail.com, in which child pornography photos and videos were exchanged. The investigation led to a court-authorized review of the kingexcellence@gmail.com e-mail account, and according to the complaint, agents determined that approximately 85 percent of the e-mails between the kingexcellence@gmail.com account and other e-mail accounts concerned the exchange of child pornographic photographs. A series of investigative steps led to the identification of Jones as the user of the kingexcellence@gmail.com account and to the execution of the federal search warrant at his residence. At the residence, the FBI recovered a laptop computer containing a number of images allegedly depicting child pornography.

If convicted of the charge filed against him, Jones faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years and a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. He also faces a maximum fine of $250,000.

The FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force is part of a nationwide effort known as the Innocence Lost National Initiative targeting those involved in the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the United States. In Chicago, the CETF is composed of FBI special agents and officers and investigators from the Chicago Police Department, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

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.