Documents detail recent child porn investigation

Court documents give a glimpse into the process law enforcement used to investigate and charge a North Ridgeville man on child porn charges.

Dana F. Cain, 48, was indicted Dec. 13 on single counts of distributing child pornography and possession of child pornography in the eastern division of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

According to the initial complaint filed in November, the investigation was a collaborative effort between the North Ridgeville Police Department, Avon Police Department and the FBI and took more than a year before federal charges were filed.

The initial complaint was filed by FBI Special Agent Kelly Liberti. It was based on written reports, information gathered through subpoenas, surveillance and FBI analysis, according to the filing.

In August 2016, an undercover North Ridgeville police officer was accessing an online peer-topeer file sharing site and identified an IP address, a numeric key that identifies a device connected to the internet, that was the source of files that were titled

in a way that led the officer to believe contained child pornography, according to the complaint.

Between August and November of that year, the officer downloaded six movie files containing multiple scenes featuring a young female child being sexually abused by an adult male, the complaint said.

In October 2016, an undercover Avon police officer also using an online peerto-peer file sharing site, identified the same IP address

as a source of possible child pornography, according to the complaint.

Between then and March 2017, the officer downloaded nine partial files and one complete file containing video of child pornography, the complaint said.

One of the videos featured a “very small, young, naked female child,” being sexually assaulted by an adult male which the file name alleged to be her father, according to the complaint.

Police, through the American Registry for Internet Numbers and Time Warner Cable, traced the IP address to Cain’s Avon Belden Road home and executed a

search warrant there March 30, the complaint said.

Officers seized a Macbook computer belonging to Cain and discovered 167 movie files containing child pornography during a preliminary on-scene examination, according to the complaint.

Officers also seized eight other devices, the complaint said.

Cain’s wife and sisterin-law, who also live in the home, never accessed the computer, the complaint said.

Cain was interviewed voluntarily at the North Ridgeville Police Department, but answered no questions, according to the complaint.

He only asked officers for a phone book to find an attorney.

After obtaining a warrant from Lorain County Common Pleas Court in April, a North Ridgeville police detective searched the devices and found only the Macbook contained child pornography, the complaint said.

The detective discovered the computer contained both a Mac and Windows operating system and all of the illegal files were contained in the Windows system.

In total, the computer contained “approximately 490 movies with titles indicating child pornography within the computer,” according to the complaint.

These files were evaluated to contain images of actual minor children “engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” the complaint said.

The complaint describes three of the videos contained in the computer featuring multiple female children as young as toddlers dressed in things like ”Winnie the Pooh” nightgowns and “a pink princess dress,” being sexually assaulted by adult males.

North Ridgeville police arrested Cain on April 5 and charged him with pandering obscenity involving a minor, possession of obscenity involving a minor and possession of criminal tools.

Those charges were dismissed in July, according to the filing.

Currently, Cain is being held in an unspecified federal facility awaiting trial, according to court documents.

Cain