A 26-year-old Brownsville man charged with child pornography has been released from jail after posting a $150,000 secured bond.
Federal court documents reflect Daniel Molstad posted bond March 1. He had been incarcerated since his Jan. 27 arrest.
A federal criminal complaint states that authorities found child pornography videos on a cellphone belonging to Molstad.
Authorities said he used the Telegram app to share the videos. Molstad was charged with one count of distribution or receipt of child pornography and one count of possessing or accessing child pornography.
Although Molstad had been employed by Children’s Museum of Brownsville around the time of his arrest, CMB Director Felipe Pena III Friday said authorities assured him that none of Molstad’s alleged wrongdoing occurred at the museum.
“It was a major tragedy to hear of what came out of it,” Pena said.
Pena put out a statement on the CMB website after learning of Molstad’s arrest assuring parents that nothing had happened at the museum.
“We continue to try and improve every day…we have great practices in place that protect everyone at the museum,” Pena said.
Molstad had been employed at CMB since 2019 where he served as a front desk clerk.
Some of the conditions of Molstad release include that he is not allowed to have any electronic devices or access to them. He is also not allowed to have access to the Internet. He is not to have any contact with minor children and must stay 100 feet away from any school, park, playground, swimming pool, arcades and beaches. He is not to volunteer with any group involving children under the age of 18
In addition, he must be confined to home detention, seek employment, refrain from using alcohol and unlawful drugs, submit to drug testing, surrender his passport, not travel to Mexico, avoid contacting any person who is an alleged victim or witness or anyone else involved in the case, and that he wear a GPS monitor.
According to court documents, the Texas Attorney General’s Office on May 25, 2021 contacted the Homeland Security Investigations and Rio Grande Valley Child Exploration Investigations Task Force with an investigative referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The referral was from a cloud-based storage involving a suspect uploading multiple files of child exploitation, authorities said.
The investigation led authorities to Molstad, and on Jan. 27, special agents with RGV CEITF conducted a “consensual interview” with the man at his work place in Brownsville, court documents reflect.
During the interview, Molstad admitted to receiving, distributing and possessing child pornography, according to authorities. He stated “he had been downloading child pornography for approximately two years through online chat groups,” the documents state.
Through a search of Molstad’s cellphone, agents said they determined he had received or downloaded more than 200 videos of child pornography from Aug. 1, 2021 to Jan. 22, 2022, the documents state.
The videos depicted children engaged in sexual acts, officials said. “In addition, some of the videos depicted infants from approximately three to six months of age engaged in sexual acts,” according to the documents.
As of Friday, no other court dates had been scheduled in Molstad’s case.
