Clover man charged with uploading child porn via WhatsApp social media, deputies say
A York County man has been charged with 11 sex crimes related to downloading child porn videos to his cellphone using the WhatsAPP social media message service.
Mario James Vera, 23, of Clover, was arrested Thursday on one count of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, and 10 counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, said officials with the S.C. Attorney General’s Office and York County Sheriff’s Office.
York County deputies were alerted April 17 when a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children showed Internet activity involving child pornography, said Trent Faris, spokesman for the sheriff’s office.
The case is part of South Carolina’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said Robert Kittle, spokesman for the attorney general’s office.
A team of sheriff’s detectives investigated and received a search warrant for Vera’s phone, according to arrest warrants obtained by The Herald.
On the phone investigators found more than a dozen videos involving underage children involved in sex acts, the warrants state. Vera shared at least one of the videos through social media, according to the warrants.
WhatsApp is a free messaging service, according to the WhatsApp Web site. The Web site Business of Apps reported Whasapp has more than 1.5 billion users worldwide.
Second-degree sexual exploitation is sharing of the videos under state law. South Carolina law defines second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor as anyone who “distributes, transports, exhibits, receives, sells, purchases, exchanges, or solicits material that contains a visual representation of a minor engaged in sexual activity or appearing in a state of sexually explicit nudity when a reasonable person would infer the purpose is sexual stimulation.”
The third-degree charges are related to possession of the child porn, according to the warrants. Those videos were saved on the cellphone after being downloaded, according to the warrants.
Vera faces as much as 110 years in prison if convicted of all charges, under South Carolina law.
Vera is being held at the York County jail.
