SHEILA A. MATHEWS :::
A Spalding County man – Timothy Smallwood, age 41 – was among 11 people arrested on child exploitation charges by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) as a result of Operation Happy New Year.
The GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes (CEACC) Unit and the GBI’s Special Enforcement Team (SET) partnered with multiple agencies from Jan. 23 to 26 to execute numerous residential search warrants on unrelated child exploitation investigations.
Operation Happy New Year was the result of months of planning, officials said.
The CEACC Unit, the host agency for Georgia’s Internet Crimes Against Children’s Task Force, executed 17 search warrants in Spalding, Clayton, DeKalb, Newton, Gwinnett and Fulton counties during the four-day period.
As a result of the search warrants, 230 digital devices were previewed on scene by GBI digital forensic investigators assigned to the CEACC Unit.
Many of those devices were seized and will be subjected to full digital forensic processing that will likely result in additional arrests.
Thus far, 11 individuals have been arrested and charged with child exploitation offenses during Operation Happy New Year including:
Timothy Smallwood, age 41, arrested in Spalding County on 12 counts of obscene internet contact with a minor;
Miguel Castillo, age 45, arrested in Clayton County on one count of sexual exploitation of children;
Joshua Casey, age 37, arrested in Clayton County on one count of sexual exploitation of children;
Louis Belgio, age 56, arrested in Clayton County on three counts of sexual exploitation of children;
Sudesh Rajkoomar, age 26, arrested in Newton County on three counts of sexual exploitation of children;
Omalin Jahir Perez-Carrasco, age 24, arrested in Newton County on three counts of sexual exploitation of children;
Jeoffrey Jenkins, age 18, arrested in Dekalb County on two counts of sexual exploitation of children;
Brent Felix, age 50, arrested in Dekalb County on four counts of sexual exploitation of children;
La’Quantay Stevens, age 23, arrested in Dekalb County on five counts of sexual exploitation of children;
Jesus Mireles-Aguilar, age 25, arrested in Fulton County on seven counts of sexual exploitation of children; and
James Burns Jr. age 62, arrested in Gwinnett County on eight counts of sexual exploitation of children.
Those arrested were transported to the county jail where their arrest occurred.
The GBI was assisted by the Gwinnett County Police Department, the Newton County Sheriff’s Office, the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office, the DeKalb County Police Department, the Atlanta Police Department, the Clayton County Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations.
The cases involved CyberTips received from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, individuals using computer peer-to-peer file sharing networks for the collection and dissemination of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and individuals engaged in sexually explicit or obscene internet contact with a child.
Operation Happy New Year is part of the ongoing effort by the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit, to identify those involved in the child pornography trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U. S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.
Anyone with information about these cases or other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Child Exploitation Unit at 404.270.8870 or report via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CyberTipline at CyberTipline.org.
Anonymous tips can also be submitted by calling 1-800-597-TIPS(8477), online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.
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