King County prosecutors charged a Kent man, 43, with two sex crimes for allegedly possessing and dealing in child pornography.
Derek Nicholas Frank faces one count of first-degree dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and one count of possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to charging documents.
Frank is scheduled to be arraigned March 4 at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. He remained in custody Feb. 19 at the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle with bail set at $50,000.
Kent Police arrested Frank on Feb. 17 at his Kent home in the 26600 block of 127th Avenue Southeast.
The investigation began in October through a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children from Media Lab about a user who had uploaded 23 videos containing depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct to their Kik (messaging app) account.
One of the videos depicts a girl about 6 to 8 years old performing sexual acts with a man. A second video depicts a girl about 5 to 7 years old performing a sexual act with a dog.
Detectives reported that the images were uploaded from IP addresses registered to T-Mobile and Comcast. Search warrants were served on Kik, Comcast and T-Mobile.
Comcast records led detectives to the Kent address. A vehicle parked in the driveway was registered to Frank.
The Kik records obtained contained thousands of records showing the Comcast IP address. Records went back to September.
Three images found were taken live in the app and were selfie-style photos of Frank. There were also videos sent from the account that showed minors engaged in sexual conduct.
Frank agreed to talk about the images but told detectives he would not “talk about anything directly.” He said he did not know any of the children in the videos. He said he found the videos on the Kik app but that he did not know anything about who produced the images or the names of the Kik groups where the images were exchanged.
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