Officials: ‘It was me,’ Wilkinsburg man said of child porn investigation at his home
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A Wilkinsburg man allegedly told police he used the internet to ask children in at least two states to send him nude photos and videos.
“It was me,” Jason Gerade Harris Jr. reportedly said when police confronted him with a search warrant for his home and arrested him Dec. 6.
The FBI and Wilkinsburg police seized multiple computer devices containing 171 images of child pornography from Harris’ home in the 1900 block of Wright Street, according to documents unsealed this week in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.
The investigation began last summer when police in St. Cloud, Minn., reported they were looking into a complaint from a parent. The parent discovered that images of her 7-year-old son that may have been forwarded to an internet address in Wilkinsburg, FBI agent Matthew Patcher reported in an affidavit.
Wilkinsburg police then received information from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department in Tampa, Fla., about an investigation into two people that convinced a 13-year-old boy to take explicit picture of his 6-year-old brother, Patcher stated. The pictures were allegedly sent to the same internet account in Wilkinsburg.
Agents told Harris they had a search warrant for his home because someone was using the internet at the house to coerce children to send nude photos and videos, Patcher wrote. Harris allegedly told the agents it was him.
Harris is being held at the Allegheny County Jail until a detention hearing Monday.
Paul Peirce is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paul at 724-850-2860, ppeirce@tribweb.com or via Twitter @ppeirce_trib.