Thomas
Two Habersham County men were arrested in the last four days through the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.
Deputies served search warrants Tuesday afternoon at the home of Christopher Lee Webb, 40, of Clarkesville. He was arrested on a charge of possession of child pornography with other charges pending from a two-month investigation, Habersham County Sheriff’s PIO Kevin Angell said.
On Friday, an Alto man was arrested on charges that he distributed pornographic images of underage children on social media.
The Criminal Investigation Division of the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office opened an investigation into a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) complaint regarding child pornography sent through SnapChat. The case was assigned to the ICAC task force.
On April 21, investigators interviewed 40-year-old Michael Blake Thomas of Alto in connection to the case. Thomas allegedly admitted to creating a SnapChat account with falsified information to talk to female users. He also admitted downloading child pornographic images and videos to share with those users.
Investigators followed up on the information obtained during the initial interview with Thomas and served additional subpoenas and search warrants on his social media accounts.
Thomas told deputies that he sent the materials to a local female resident, but Angell said investigators have not been able to verify that.
Based on the NCMEC complaint and the investigative findings, Thomas was arrested on two counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children, possession of child pornography and two counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children–distribution of child pornography.
Thomas was booked into the Habersham County Jail and is awaiting bond.
The ICAC unit has been putting its training to good use in recent weeks, making its first three arrests under the new program.
“All the training and resources we received from the GBI and NCMEC for our deputies has paid off and we are seeing the fruits of that labor,” Angell said. “We will continue to aggressively pursue these cases as they come in.”