A 25-year-old Austin man has been charged with a pair of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) charges after a tip came to the Austin Police Department having been filtered down from a social media site. Jared Michael Bednar was arrested on Dec. 11 during the execution of a search warrant at his residence. He made a first appearance in Mower County District Court on Friday. Bednar has been charged with dissemination of pornographic work involving a child under the age of 14 and possession pornographic work involving a child under the age of 14. Both are felonies He has an initial appearance scheduled for 10 a.m. on Dec. 26. According to court documents, the initial tip came from the social media platform Kik, which had reported that one of its users had uploaded over 100 files of suspected CSAM. An APD detective noted that each cybertip had the same IP addresses and similar email addresses and that through subpoenas to Microsoft, Charter and Metronet an associated email belonged to the username of “Jared Bednar.” The information provided by the company also revealed that two businesses were associated with uploads, but that they were utilized by the same clearing service Bednar was employed with. Neither business has been implicated. Of the files reviewed from Kik, at least one of the files was confirmed to include CSAM, a video that was sent from the suspect user to another through private messages. Court files reflect the detective obtained a search warrant for the Kik account associated with the uploads and on Nov. 20 discovered numerous files of CSAM and noted that that IP address associated with the account was the same provided by the cybertips. When questioned by the detective during the Dec. 11th search warrant execution, Bednar denied using the associated email address and acknowledged that he worked for the cleaning company in question. He also allegedly admitted to cleaning the two businesses. Despite claiming initially that he hadn’t used Kik for quite some time, Bednar allegedly then admitted that he had used the site recently to look up adult pornography and had never actively looked for CSAM. However, according to court documents he did allegedly admit to seeing some CSAM. When questioned further, Bednar told the detective he had CSAM and would then send CSAM to other users. At the same time, Bednar claimed that he was receiving the files from others and that he was trying to get evidence to later report them. A claim he reiterated on Dec. 12 in a recorded call from the jail where he further claimed he was saving the files for evidence. Court documents state that at no point has the detective seen evidence that Bednar had attempted to report the CSAM, but did observe alleged chat messages from him asking for CSAM and disseminating CSAM to other users. During the search warrant, two iPhones, an HP laptop, HP desktop tower and Xbox external hard drive were recovered and were going to be sent to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for forensic examination. The post Austin man accused of possessing and disseminating child pornography appeared first on Austin Daily Herald.