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An Edinburg man was arrested Thursday following an investigation conducted by Homeland Security Investigations that discovered the man to be in possession of over 120 images and 550 videos of child pornography, according to a criminal complaint.
Jaime Christian Flores, who was born in 1989, was charged with knowingly possessing and knowingly accessing child sex abuse material, or CSAM, through an online group chat where they’d share sexually explicit images and videos of minors as young as two to three months of age.
On April 3, Homeland Security Investigations special agents in McAllen received a referral from HSI Monterey, California regarding their results of an investigation they conducted on or about Jan. 9., according to the complaint.
HSI Monterey encountered and identified Flores actively engaging and participating in an online group chat where members discussed and shared their attempts to engage with minors on the internet for sexual purposes, exchange usernames of potential minor victims and shared explicit images and videos of the victims.
On April 18, special agents made contact with Flores at his residence in Edinburg where he provided written and verbal consent to conduct a full search of his personal cellphone, which “revealed over 120 images and 550 videos of CSAM consisting of infants to minors approximately 12 years of age engaged in sexually explicit acts,” the complaint said.
One of the images involved a minor female between the ages of two and three. Another video depicted sexual acts between an adult male and a minor male, who was approximately two to three months of age.
The CSAM was stored in Flores’ Galaxy cellphone.
Flores is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nadia S. Medrano in McAllen federal court for his detention hearing on Wednesday.
