Army major made child porn with hidden camera and shared it in chat group, feds say
An officer in the U.S. Army unknowingly admitted to an undercover cop on the messenger app Kik that he had a secret camera in his bathroom, according to federal prosecutors and court filings.
Now he could face decades in prison.
Jason Michael Musgrove, a 40-year old Army Major stationed at Fort Gordon in Georgia, pleaded guilty Thursday to producing child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia said in a news release. Fort Gordon in Augusta is about two hours northeast of Macon.
“The production of child pornography is one of the most horrendous crimes we deal with in our society,” Special Agent in Charge Chris Hacker said in the release. “It is even more concerning when the crime is allegedly committed by a member of our armed forces who is sworn to protect the United States.”
Musgrove was an integrated threat operations officer with top secret clearance at the Army Cyber Joint Headquarters when he was arrested in December 2019, prosecutors said.
He was reportedly living in nearby Grovetown at the time.
Federal agents tracked Musgrove down after he joined a chat group on Kik Messenger in 2019 where individuals shared child pornography, according to court filings.
Kik is a free messaging app that has come under fire for giving potential child predators relative anonymity on the Internet, The New York Times reported in 2016. The group Musgrove joined with the username “thatjonthomasguy” was monitored by an undercover FBI agent with the Metropolitan Police Department-Federal Bureau of Investigation Child Exploitation Task Force.
Musgrove told the undercover agent he had a hidden camera, according to court filings.
He used the camera to post nude pictures of a teen in the group chat and later discussed plans to drug and rape the girl as soon as her mother left town on a business trip, special agents said in affidavits supporting the charges. Musgrove reportedly said in the chats that he had already performed some sexual acts involving the teen of which she was unaware.
The Army major also responded “HOT” to a video of child pornography shared in the group chat, according to court filings.
During the course of their conversation, Musgrove reportedly confided in the undercover agent that he was an officer in the U.S. Army and that his camera was “quite small.”
“I set it up as needed and then it has a motion sensing capability,” he said. “When it senses motions it records for a set period of time and then turns off until it senses motion again.”
Law enforcement subsequently received Musgrove’s subscriber information and email address from Kik, according to court filings. They traced the account to an IP address at his home in Grovetown.
An attorney for Musgrove did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
A sentencing date has not been set, but prosecutors said Musgrove faces up to 30 years in prison and “substantial fines and restitution to victims in the case.”
