Opinion ID: 2818183
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Locating the Defendant

Text: On January 29, 2010, at the request of law enforcement in Puerto Rico, Lieutenant Glenn Lang (Lang), supervisor of the Maine State Police's computer crimes unit, conducted a peer-to-peer networking investigation to determine whether child pornography was being transmitted to Puerto Rico over the internet. Lang, an expert in computer forensics and peer-to-peer networking, checked LimeWire, a peer-to-peer program that allows users who install it on their computers to set up folders and share files with other 2 All of the facts recounted are taken directly from the trial testimony of the identified officers. We describe the government's case generally here. Additional evidence from the government's case is discussed in relation to specific arguments Figueroa presents about the insufficiency of the evidence. -4- LimeWire users. In order to find consumers of child pornography, Lang accessed a number of databases containing lists of files that police officers had identified as child pornography. Using global unique identifiers, Lang was able to obtain a list of the top offenders in San Juan, Puerto Rico by identifying the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the LimeWire users who had accessed the greatest number of files tagged as child pornography in the police databases. At the top of that list was IP address 209.91.206.209, which police databases indicated was sharing 363 files of child pornography through LimeWire by the time Lang conducted his investigation in January 2010. From November 28, 2009 through early 2010, the only user of IP address 209.91.206.209 was the household of Fernando Figueroa, the father of appellant Alejandro Figueroa. Caribe Net, an internet service provider in Puerto Rico, assigned that IP address to Fernando Figueroa's account. It was Caribe Net's practice to assign only one IP address to a single residential address, even if several individuals used multiple computers within the residence. In the names for the files associated with IP address 209.91.206.209, Lang identified several terms commonly used in child pornography files, including pthc (for preteen hard core), pedophilia, pedo, r@ygold, hussyfan, and child porn. For example, Lang testified that on January 27, 2010, a video file with the title porn pthc 9yo Vicki stripping and -5- sucking (kiddie pedo illegal underage preteen).mpg was shared with IP address 209.91.206.209. Lang indicated that the file was a fairly large video file . . . in what's called the Vicki series and shows a nine-year-old girl stripping down who gets down on her knees and performs oral sex on an adult male. Lang mailed the results of his child pornography database search to the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) directorate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Puerto Rico. Agent Harold Simmons Julsrud, III, a criminal investigator and forensics agent in the cyber crimes group of HSI, received the information, and, through Caribe Net, learned the physical address associated with IP address 209.91.206.209. He then obtained a search warrant for the residence.