A Cornplanter Township man is facing over 450 charges for the alleged possession of child pornography.
The Pennsylvania State Police Computer Crime Unit said in a criminal complaint that in March 2021 they received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that child sexual abuse material had been uploaded to Dropbox, an online storage platform, and that the information led back to Jonathan Alexander Masters, 27, of Cornplanter.
The account which uploaded the files was under the username Jon Masters, and the IP address from which they were uploaded was found to be registered to a customer whose last name was Masters, the complaint said.
In August 2024, another cyber tip was received for two files of suspected child sexual abuse materials that had been disseminated in a private chat on Kik, a social messaging application, the complaint continued.
The complaint said that investigatory efforts identified Masters, who resides in the 400 block of Halyday Run Road.
A further cyber tip in September 2024 for four files of child sexual abuse materials also disseminated through Kik private message led back to the same IP address as the first Kik files, the complaint stated.
According to the complaint, the youngest child depicted in the files from the tips was approximately 4 to 5 years old.
In January, a search warrant was carried out by Franklin state police and the state police Northwest Computer Crime Task Force at Masters’ residence, the complaint said.
Three devices were seized, two of which were later found to have child sexual abuse material on them, for a total of 292 files of indecent assault and 165 files depicting nudity, according to the complaint.
The complaint continued that Masters confessed to sending and receiving child sexual abuse materials and that he had been engaging in that course of conduct for years, and he confirmed the user information in the cyber tips.
Masters is facing 457 felony counts of child pornography, two felony charges of criminal use of a communication facility and a felony charge of disseminating a photo or film of child sex acts.
He was arraigned Monday before Magisterial District Judge Andrew Fish, and his preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on March 5 before Magisterial District Judge Patrick Lowrey.
