Sugar Grove man faces federal child pornography charge
By MAtt Hanley mhanley@stmedianetwork.com June 11, 2012 9:33AM
Dennis Houston
Updated: July 13, 2012 6:10AM
A Sugar Grove man is facing felony child pornography charges after he admitted he had more than 100 child porn images on his computer.
On Monday, the FBI announced that Dennis Houston, 43, of the 3S500 block of Bliss Road in Sugar Grove, had been charged with felony transportation of child pornography. He was arrested at his home Thursday by the Chicago FBI’s Innocent Images Task Force.
Houston was charged in a criminal complaint filed June 6 in Chicago. According to an affidavit filed to obtain a search warrant, on Feb. 29, an undercover agent in Maryland spotted someone sharing password-protected files with suspicious names. One of the files used an abbreviation commonly associated with pre-teen child pornography.
The undercover agent began chatting with a person later determined to be Houston, according to the affidavit. Houston shared a password — “kiddie” — for two folders. The agent began downloading pictures from Houston. But, during the download, Houston realized he was not able to download files from the agent’s computer, the affidavit said. Houston changed his password so the agent could not download any more files until there was reciprocation, the affidavit said.
The undercover agent had already dowloaded 20 images and one video before Houston changed the password, the affidavit says. Four of the images are described in the affidavit. They showed young girls engaged in sexual acts with adults or displaying their genitals, according to the affidavit. One of the pictures was called “6yo”, an abbreviation for 6-year-old.
Federal investigators were able to trace the files to a computer in Houston’s house. After getting a warrant, federal agents came to Houston’s home and confiscated his laptop. Agents found more than 1,300 images and files that contained child pornography in a computer folder that included Houston’s name, officials said.
According to the affidavit, Houston admitted to having at least 100 child pornography images on his computer. He admitted to sharing and receiving child pornography images in file sharing networks, the affidavit said. When confronted with print-outs of four pictures that the agent downloaded, Houston admitted he had seen the pictures before, the affidavit said.
As of Monday, Houston was being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago without bond, pending his next court appearance, which was scheduled for Tuesday. If convicted, Houston faces between five and 20 years in prison.
Anyone who may have information about Houston is asked to call the FBI in Chicago at 312-421-6700.
