(KNSI) — A 23-year-old from Melrose is in the Stearns County jail, charged with four counts of possessing child pornography following a tip that came in to the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
According to the criminal complaint, in August, an investigator with the ICAC began looking into the tip that images involving child exploitation were being downloaded from an address in Melrose. Back in May, court documents say a cyber tip from Google was submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding a video depicting child sexual abuse that had been accessed and gave the NCMEC the IP address, which investigators say led them to Rodolfo Ramirez.
The criminal complaint says Google also provided the subscriber information related to the video that allegedly registered to Ramirez. Prosecutors say there were two different email addresses associated with the account and allegedly are registered to Ramirez.
On September 22nd, a search warrant was executed at Ramirez’s home. His iPhone was seized and searched. According to the criminal complaint, there were 73 videos and 35 photos depicting children being sexually abused.
Police say Ramirez admitted the email addresses were his. Another person in the house said Ramirez was living there when the videos and photos were accessed.
A search of court records shows Ramirez has 21 other cases pending against him in Stearns County, including drug and weapons possession charges. Police say he has repeatedly failed to appear in court and posted high amounts of bail in each of the open files.
Charges against Ramirez, in this case, were filed on October 19th. Ramirez was arrested Tuesday, November 16th. Bail was set at $500,000. He is due back in court on December 2nd.
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