MORRISDALE – A Morrisdale man has been accused of possessing and disseminating child pornography.
Robert L. Lannen Jr., 52, has been charged by Pennsylvania State Police with nine counts of dissemination photo/film of child sex acts; 40 counts of child pornography; and one count of criminal use of communication facility.
Lannen was arraigned at 11:50 a.m. Friday and incarcerated at the Clearfield County Jail in lieu of $200,000 bail. He’s scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 19 during centralized court.
The charges stem from an investigation conducted by the PSP Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Computer Crime Unit, according to the affidavit of probable cause filed with the office of Magisterial District Judge Jerome Nevling.
On June 6, an undercover PSP investigator located a computer sharing child pornography on an eMule file network with client software, Shareeza. He was subsequently able to download contraband digital files from this computer and view them.
It was determined that the computer’s IP address was assigned to the Internet Service Provider, Zito Media. On Oct. 2, a subpoena was served to obtain the subscriber’s information, and the ISP identified Lannen as the subscriber.
From approximately April 3 through July 3, there were nine video files successfully downloaded, which originated from Lannen’s computer, depicting child pornography, investigators said.
On Friday morning, a search warrant was executed on Lannen’s residence and investigators seized a thumb drive from a bedroom. It was examined and allegedly resulted in the discovery of at least 46 video files depicting child pornography.
Investigators interviewed Lannen and he indicated he was familiar with P2P, or Peer-to-Peer software, “Shareeza.” He allegedly admitted that he’s viewed and possessed child pornography and the thumb drive belonged to him.
Lannen told investigators that images and videos would be found on his laptop computer, and he’s the only person responsible for any child pornography located in his residence or disseminated from it.
