Willmar man faces 12 felonies for possession, dissemination of child pornography, alleged to have had hard drive with 2,500+ videos

WILLMAR — A Willmar man has been charged with 12 felonies for possession of child pornography, including a hard drive allegedly containing more than 2,500 videos of child pornography.

Jon Pierre Torres, 30, has been charged in Kandiyohi County District Court with seven counts of possession of child pornography and five counts of dissemination of child pornography.

His next court appearance is a pretrial hearing on June 8.

After his first court appearance last week, Torres was released on his own recognizance with a number of conditions. Bail for release without conditions is $50,000.

Torres is to have no possession of legal or illegal pornography, must submit to random searches and have no access to the internet or social media for non-work purposes. He was ordered to download an oversight program if it's requested so his computer and internet use can be monitored.

According to the criminal complaint, the Willmar Police Department was contacted in September 2020 by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children . They reported that they had detected five uploads of apparent child pornography in a Dropbox account on April 19, 2020.

The videos showed a naked adult male and a naked prepubescent boy engaged in a sex act, according to court records.

Subpoenas were used to track the IP address, the email address and the screen name which were linked to the Dropbox account. The investigation led to Torres.

Willmar police searched Torres’ apartment in September with a search warrant. They seized a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 phone, an external hard drive and an HP laptop.

The email address for which they had searched is alleged to be one of the email addresses used on that phone.

The external hard drive allegedly contained about 2,575 videos of suspected child pornography showing obviously underage victims, according to court records. Eleven videos of suspected child pornography were found on the laptop, also showing obviously underage victims.

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