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  • Utah Investigation Leads To Child Porn Charges
    by Paul Murphy
    Published - 05/19/12 - 09:10 PM | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend | print
    (Salt Lake City, UT) - An Ohio daycare center operator has been indicted for allegedly making child pornography after an investigation by the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. The probe also led to the arrest of a Utah man and could result in more charges across the country.

    Darin Casper, 49, of Cleveland pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 150 counts of sexual crimes against children for allegedly manufacturing sexually-explicit child pornography videos and photographs of young boys. Casper's home is also where his wife runs a daycare center.

    "The Ohio suspect is accused of operating a wide web of sharing child pornography from his home. That web is now being followed strand by strand to apprehend others involved in creating and trading child pornography," says Patricia Reed, ICAC Task Force Field Commander.

    One strand led investigators to 27-year-old Dino Prste of Salt Lake City. Prste was charged May 10 by the Utah Attorney General's Office with 20 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

    Prste was initially interviewed during Operation Frostbite, a month-long investigation that ended in February 2010 with 14 arrests, 25 additional suspect interviews and the seizure of 35 computers and three cell phones and more than 100 CDs containing tens of thousands of illegal child pornography images.

    Utah ICAC Special Agent Alan White followed up by identifying the location of the suspects alleged to trade child pornography with Prste and started assembling evidence of their suspected crimes. He then personally contacted officers and agents in the home towns of those suspects across the nation*including Darin Casper.

    "We don't know don't know how many kids Darin Casper may have abused, filmed or photographed," adds Reed. "What is certain is that one dedicated Utah cop made sure that children in the Casper day care center are no longer subject to sexual exploitation."

    The Ohio ICAC Task Force seized two computer towers, 417 CDs, seven cell phones, five laptops, three flash drives, 106 floppy disks, three digital cameras, 55 VHS tapes, one media card, and three hard drives. A preliminary examination indicates approximately 1,500 child pornography images and videos were seized. They are now trying to identify the children in the images.

    Prste and Casper, and all suspects, are presumed innocent unless convicted in a court of law. Booking photos of Prste and Casper can be found here http://www.1.usa.gov/KiDiHO

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