A federal grand jury indicted a 43-year-old registered sex offender from SeaTac on Friday for distributing images of child rape via Twitter.
Police arrested Danny Zimmerman in June after an investigation traced images of child rape to his Twitter account and his Internet protocol (IP) address, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office media release. Zimmerman has been in custody following his arrest on state charges. He will be arraigned on the indictment on Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
The Internet Crimes against Children Task Force, the Kent Police Department and the King County Sheriff’s Office investigated the case.
According to records filed in King County Superior Court and in U.S. District Court, between September 2014 and February 2015, Twitter made multiple reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) about images of child rape uploaded to the Internet.
The reports resulted in a law enforcement investigation involving Western Washington’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. The investigation revealed that the Internet address reportedly involved in the distribution of the sexually explicit images was used by Zimmerman. Detectives also found out Zimmerman had two 1996 convictions for first-degree child molestation.
Due to the prior convictions, Zimmerman faces a mandatory minimum 15 years in prison if convicted of distribution of visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
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