South Pymatuning man faces child pornography charges
Dec. 8—SOUTH PYMATUNING TOWNSHIP — A South Pymatuning Township man is facing child pornography charges after police say he digitally saved multiple indecent photos and videos involving children.
Nicholas Alan Nasser, 33, of 3650 Saranac Drive, is charged with 117 counts of disseminating photos or film of child sex acts, 280 counts of child pornography and two counts of criminal use of a communication facility.
Nasser was arraigned Thursday afternoon, and he will return to court for his preliminary hearing at 10 a.m. Dec. 27 before District Judge Brian Arthur.
According to the criminal complaint, investigators with the Pennsylvania State Police's Northwest Computer Crime Task Force received a tip from Internet Crimes Against Children, or ICAC, on April 13, 2021. The tip itself was provided to the ICAC by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The tip reported that child pornography was uploaded to Synchronoss Technologies Inc.'s servers by someone using the Verizon Cloud. The tip provided a cell phone number and email address for the suspect, and reported that 21 files containing suspected child pornography were uploaded.
An additional tip was provided to investigators that same date, reporting that the suspect uploaded one more file containing suspected child pornography.
Investigators received subsequent tips regarding the same suspect over the following months, including on July 12, 2021, when 19 files were uploaded; on Aug. 23, 2021, when 61 files were uploaded; and on Sept. 24, 2021, when 15 files were uploaded.
All of the files contained suspected child pornography, the criminal complaint states.
A subpoena submitted by investigators to Verizon on April 16, 2021, connected the phone number and email address with Nasser, who at the time was living at 128 S. 11th St., Sharpsville.
On March 10, 2022, investigators reviewed the 117 files, all of which were videos, uploaded by Nasser and determined they depicted child pornography.
Eventually it was learned that Nasser had moved to 3650 Saranac Drive in South Pymatuning Township, and a search warrant was served on Nasser's address on April 8, 2022, by members of the state police and the Northwest Computer Crimes Task Force.
Investigators questioned Nasser, who confirmed his phone number and email address and allegedly told police he accidentally viewed the child pornography. He said continued viewing the pornography because the taboo of viewing it interested him, the criminal complaint states.
Nasser denied viewing child pornography on his new phone, which he only had for about a month, and only viewed it on his old phone.
Nasser initially denied saving the child pornography to his devices, then later told police he did save the pornography to his phone, but thought he deleted it and did not intend to save it to the Verizon Cloud.
Nasser told police the laptops and cell phones within his house were very old and broken, and that he thought he threw away his old phone. Police later found Nasser's old phone and seized multiple devices from the residence, the criminal complaint states.
After forensic examination, investigators found about 280 images and videos of child pornography on two of the cell phones taken from Nasser's residence.
These images and videos depicted children under the age of 10 years old, most of them toddlers, engaged in sex acts.
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