CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Juntian Tong, a 32-year-old resident of Champaign, Illinois, was arrested on Thursday for possession of child pornography.
According to University of Illinois Police, detectives executed a search warrant at his apartment in the 200 block of East John Street, where they allegedly found 53 sexually explicit videos of children saved to his cloud storage account.
The arrest came following an investigation that began with a tip from Google in January. The tech giant alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that they had detected two videos with a digital signature that matched known child sexual assault material.
That tip was passed on to law enforcement through the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, a national network of investigators with branches in most states.
The University of Illinois Police Department has two detectives who are members of the Illinois branch of ICAC and are specially trained to investigate crimes involving child sexual assault material. After collecting more digital information associated with the crime tip from Google, investigators obtained a search warrant for Tong’s online accounts, which led to the discovery of the videos. Tong was subsequently arrested and taken to the Champaign County Jail.
The incident isn’t the first arrest made by the University of Illinois Police Department for possession of child pornography. The department has been able to make several arrests in recent years because of its partnership with ICAC.
Possession of child pornography is a serious crime, and law enforcement agencies across the country are working diligently to combat it. Anyone who suspects that someone is in possession of child pornography is encouraged to report it to the authorities immediately. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a CyberTipline where such reports can be made anonymously.
