JEFFERSON CO., Pa. (EYT) – A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning for a Sykesville man facing multiple felony charges after being discovered in possession of child pornography.
Court documents indicate 29-year-old Drue J. Crooks is scheduled to stand for a preliminary hearing in front of Magisterial District Judge David B. Inzana at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 25.
Crooks faces the following charges:
– Child Pornography, Felony 2 (28 counts)
– Criminal Use Of Communication Facility, Felony 3
– Disseminate Photo/Film of Child Sex Acts, Felony 3 (28 counts)
He is currently free on $20,000.00 unsecured bail.
The charges stem from an investigation that began nearly two years ago.
Details of the case:
According to a criminal complaint, on April 29, 2020, the Pennsylvania State Police Troop I Computer Crime Unit initiated an investigation after being contacted by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) organization in relation to a CyberTipline report generated by Google.
The complaint indicates Google advised that two images of child pornography were uploaded to the Google Gmail infrastructure on April 1, 2020, and provided account information that the images were uploaded from a user identified as Drue Crooks. Google also provided the IP address used to upload the images.
The IP address was then searched and found to be owned by Comcast Cable and an administrative subpoena was issued to determine the subscriber information.
According to the complaint, information from Comcast indicated the IP address was assigned to Drue Crooks.
Police then received another tip from ICAC regarding two images of child pornography uploaded to the Verizon Cloud on November 30, 2020, and January 4, 2021. The images were reportedly uploaded to an account associated with the same phone number listed for Crooks and provided in his Comcast subscriber information.
A search warrant was then executed on Crooks’s residence in Stump Creek, Henderson Township, Jefferson County. It was found that Crooks did not live at the address any longer, but had lived there until June or July of 2020. Crooks was later interviewed at his new residence.
According to the complaint, during the interview, Crooks admitted he did search for adult pornography regularly, and while searching, the links he would click on would lead him to adult pornography but also sometimes to child pornography. He told police he never searched for child pornography on purpose. He also reportedly confirmed his phone number was the same number associated with the Comcast account at the Verizon report.
A search warrant was then served on Google for Crooks’s Gmail account. During a search of the email, police reportedly found emails with attachments of images and videos of child pornography. A total of 20 images and videos of child pornography and six images or videos of child pornography that involved indecent contact were discovered, the complaint states.
Police also served a search warrant on Crooks’ Verizon Cloud account, but the complaint indicates no additional child pornography was found on the account.
Crooks was arraigned in front of Magisterial District Judge David B. Inzana on Wednesday, January 5, 2022.
