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Sheffield man enters plea in case of child pornography

A Sheffield man has pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the possession of over 1,000 images and videos of child pornography on his cell phone.

Michael R. Jordan, 40, entered the plea – to two counts of sexual abuse of children and criminal use of a communications facility – Thursday before President Judge Maureen Skerda.

Jordan was charged by the Pennsylvania State Police Computer Crime Unit.

According to the affidavit of probable cause, Pennsylvania State Police received a tip from Internet Crimes Against Children from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The tip, per the affidavit, initially came from Google, which had reported that child pornography had been uploaded onto its servers and recorded the suspected IP address of that Google user.

Investigators then prepared an “administrative subpoena compelling” the internet service provider to provide subscriber and billing information which the affidavit identified as Jordan.

Seven additional were reported from Google, as well, for child pornography uploaded to its servers from the same IP address.

A search warrant was served on October 21, 2022, and contact was made with Jordan without incident.

Investigators state that Jordan agreed to be interviewed and “first stated that he has never seen child pornography” and that he “must have been hacked after he clicked on an email about setting up a joke about a mail order bride for his friend.”

The affidavit alleged that Jordan “admitted that was a lie” and then told investigators that he has saved child pornography on a thumb drive “because he wanted to set up his father-in-law who has been harassing his wife. He stated that he wanted to ‘slip’ the thumb drive containing child pornography into his pocket and call the police and report that he had child pornography on him.”

Later in the interview, investigators said Jordan indicated that his viewing of child pornography “started out trying to set up people that wronged him but then he started to get interested in it.”

A cell phone and laptop were seized and investigators say that a “hidden folder that contained hundreds of images of child pornography” was found on the device.

According to the criminal complaint, the pornography included infants and prepubescent girls.

His attorney, Elizabeth Feronti, said that the charges bring a 15 year registration as a sexual offender.

Starting at $3.50/week.

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