Federal agent will plead guilty to child porn charges

A federal agent has signed a plea deal in which he admits he received and accessed thousands of images of child pornography.

Richard Nikolai Gratkowski, 40, who has been with Homeland Security Investigations since 2008, took a plea offer instead of going to trial.

A guilty plea means he faces five to 20 years on the charge of receiving the images and up to 20 years on a count of accessing child porn with intent to view it. He is expected to formalize the deal at a plea hearing expected to be scheduled within a week in federal court in San Antonio.

According to court testimony, Gratkowski most recently worked on gang investigations in San Antonio for HSI, a section of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also had worked in Eagle Pass.

An FBI agent previously testified that Gratkowski’s employer put him on paid leave and was working to fire him.

“All Department of Homeland Security employees are held to the highest standards of behavior and ethics,” ICE said in a statement issued after Gratkowski was arrested in January. “While ICE does not comment on personnel matters, the agency is fully cooperating with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) regarding this issue.”

Gratkowski was arrested Jan. 4 after his case was referred to the FBI by his own agency’s internal affairs branch and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigators, FBI special agent Larry Baker testified at a hearing in February.

Baker testified that Gratkowski’s arrest arose out of an investigation into a child porn website on The Onion Router, or TOR network, which seeks to keep users anonymous by using thousands of relays or servers, much like the layers of an onion. The same investigation also ensnared thenBorder Patrol agent Paul Casey Whipple, 35, of Hondo in mid-December.

According to Baker, the website in question provided access to more than 117,000 graphic child porn videos. Gratkowski and Whipple were both identified as users.

In Gratkowski’s case, he used his USAA bank account — and his government ID — to buy bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, and open an account on the child porn website in April 2016, Baker said. Gratkowski then established a second account that gave him access to the site through much of 2017.

Baker said Gratkowski also visited two other child porn websites on the TOR network and used a social media app called Kik to get to another child porn site.

The FBI served a search warrant at Gratkowski’s home in early January and recovered two nonworking iPhones and a computer hard drive, but did not find any child porn images, Baker said. But the FBI did find — in one of two working iPhones recovered from Gratkowski — evidence of links to child pornography, and he admitted visiting the child porn sites, Baker said.

“He said that in April 2016, he turned to child porn and turned to the site and two other (child porn) sites on the TOR network,” Baker testified at the February hearing. “He advised he’d been in a dark place as a result of problems with his wife, work stressors and financial stressors. … He went to the dark net to avoid detection.”

Baker testified that before the raid, Gratkowski used an anti-forensics program to wipe child porn images from his computers.

Gratkowski also told agents he destroyed the computer he used to download child pornography in mid-December and threw it in a Dumpster outside the San Antonio apartment he shared with his girlfriend.

In his plea deal, he admits to many of Baker’s allegations. The documents show an external hard drive contained 190 deleted files of child porn.

The plea deal also said he used the Kik app on his phone to view child porn when he could not access it on the computer in the home where his wife and children live.

Gratkowski, who served in the Army, was awarded a Bronze Star and was honorably discharged, according to testimony from his father, who lives in Washington state. He’s been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, his father added.

Gratkowski’s wife filed for divorce in March in Bexar County, and Gratkowski filed a counterclaim in September. The case is pending, records show.

Whipple, meanwhile, is charged with producing, distributing and possessing child pornography. He’s accused of sexually assaulting a minor and sharing images of it over the internet. He faces 15 to 30 years for the production charge alone. His trial is scheduled for Nov. 29, but his plea deadline is Friday.