East Windsor man accused of making child pornography
Dec. 1—An East Windsor man was arrested Monday on federal charges of producing pornographic pictures and videos of a girl between 6 and 8 years old and transporting child pornography, U.S. Attorney Leonard C. Boyle announced.
The man, Mark Roman, 53, was arrested Nov. 19 on related state charges. He was released on $300,000 bond in the state case, but is being held without bond in the federal case pending a Dec. 8 hearing in U.S. District Court in Hartford on whether he should stay in jail or be released while the case is pending.
Assistant Federal Defender Charles F. Willson, who represents Roman, declined to comment on the case. But Willson wrote in a motion filed late Tuesday afternoon that he understands that, other than the recent state arrest, Roman has had "no prior significant contact with a criminal justice system."
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
DEFENDANT: Mark Roman, 53, of the Broad Brook section of East Windsor
CHARGES: Producing and transporting child pornography
STATUS: Held without bond pending a Dec. 8 hearing in U.S. District Court in Hartford on whether he should continue to be held or be released on bond while the case is pending.
The charge of producing child pornography carries 15 to 30 years in prison, while the charge of transporting child pornography carries five to 20 years.
The investigation started when the Yahoo internet portal reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that it had found 43 pictures and videos of child pornography in an email account in Roman's name, according to a law enforcement officer's affidavit.
Yahoo also provided internet protocol addresses associated with recent logons to the account, according to the affidavit, by state police Detective Jonathan Carreiro, who is also a member of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security law-enforcement task force.
The detective went on to report the following:
The IP addresses were associated with a physical address in the Broad Brook section of East Windsor, which a law-enforcement database listed as Roman's address.
Among the files Yahoo provided were five that appeared to be homemade in that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had never seen them before. Four were voyeuristic videos of a prepubescent girl, while one was a still picture of a girl, naked above the waist, playing with toys.
On Nov. 2, East Windsor and state police executed a search warrant at the Broad Brook home, and Roman agreed to speak to the detective outside. Roman said the email account in which the child pornography had been found had been hacked, adding that he had contacted Yahoo but had been unable to obtain access to the account.
Roman said he hadn't searched for child pornography but had seen it pop up while viewing other pornographic websites. He eventually admitted he had saved child pornography to his smartphone.
Roman admitted taking one voyeuristic video of a girl he identified, and he identified another girl in the voyeuristic videos provided by Yahoo. But he denied intending to capture voyeuristic material in the latter videos.
The detective identified 2,800 pictures constituting suspected child pornography on three devices seized during the search — Roman's smartphone, a laptop computer, and an external hard drive. The detective reported that he also located hundreds of voyeuristic pictures and videos of girls and women who didn't appear to know they were being recorded.
Two "folders" of computer files were labeled with the name of one of the identified girls. Both folders included voyeuristic pictures and videos of the girl, some including clear pictures of Roman's face as he sets up the camera, according to the detective.
The folders also included more overtly pornographic videos. One of them ends with the camera panning up to the girl's face, which the detective reported appears to be one of the identified girls.
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