Opinion ID: 2369035
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Investigation Culminating in Christie's Arrest

Text: The investigation began in November 2005 as the byproduct of an unrelated fraud investigation into Jerrod Lochmiller, who happened to be the administrator of the NAMGLA site. Lochmiller, who was a fugitive and on probation at all times pertinent to this case, contacted the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles through his attorney, George Buehler. Buehler indicated that, in exchange for the government's dropping fraud charges against Lochmiller, Lochmiller would, in turn, provide access to the NAMGLA website and information on its users. The U.S. Attorney's Office agreed and referred the case to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which assigned Special Agent Douglas MacFarlane as the primary case agent for the investigation. Buehler furnished a user name and password, which MacFarlane then used to access restricted areas of the NAMGLA website. At trial, MacFarlane testified that the password-protected areas of the website contained three sections entitled the N Gallery, the Private Gallery, and the Private Lounge. In the N Gallerywhich MacFarlane identified as an abbreviation for Nude Galleryusers could post links to other websites containing sexually explicit images and videos of children posing by themselves. The Private Gallery and Private Lounge sections of the website operated in a similar manner, except that the links posted in them typically contained images of children engaged in sexual acts with adults or with one another. MacFarlane testified that access to the site was free but that users were required to submit links to child pornography to the site moderators in order to obtain a username and password. During the course of the investigation, one such user, who went by the screen name franklee, consistently posted links to new images and videos, and posted comments to the website. As a result of MacFarlane's investigation, the FBI undertook efforts to identify the users of the website. Identifying the users proved difficult, due to the manner in which individual computers are identified when linked to the internet. Residential internet customers typically connect to the internet through an internet service provider (ISP). Each time a customer connects, the ISP assigns a unique identifier, known as an IP address, to the customer's computer terminal. Depending on the ISP, a customer's IP address can change each time he logs on to the internet. ISPs retain for a finite period of timeusually thirty, sixty, or ninety daysrecords of the IP addresses that they assign to customers. IP addresses are also conveyed to websites that an internet user visits, and administrators of websites, like NAMGLA's, can see the IP addresses of visitors to their sites. However, site administrators do not possess information linking a given IP address to a particular person. That information is held by the ISPs. The FBI initially attempted to obtain the IP addresses of visitors to the NAMGLA website from Lochmiller, but, because all communications between the FBI and Lochmiller were handled through Buehler, the information was too stale to be useful. By the time government agents got the IP addresses from Buehler, there was not enough time to subpoena customer identities from the ISPs before the ISPs had purged their records reflecting which IP addresses had been assigned to which customers. Accordingly, in April 2006, the FBI requested that Lochmiller give them administrator-level access to the NAMGLA website, which he did. With that higher level of access, the FBI was able to see the IP addresses associated with each user. MacFarlane then began monitoring the IP addresses that appeared on the NAMGLA site, and he ultimately identified approximately forty individual users. From there, he apparently acquired from the ISPs the identity of the users associated with the IP addresses. One of those individuals was Christie, who posted to NAMGLA using the screen name franklee. According to MacFarlane, Christie was one of the most prolific contributors to the NAMGLA site, having written more than 2,500 posts between October 2005 and July 2006. As a moderator for the site, Christie enforced site rules and counseled less-experienced users about how to name and password-protect files to avoid detection by law enforcement authorities. Christie's moderator-level access also gave him the ability to approve new member accounts. On July 25, 2006, the FBI executed multiple search warrants as part of a coordinated takedown effort aimed at the website and many of its users. FBI agents at Christie's residence seized over five-hundred CD-ROMs containing images of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, printed images with similar content, and Christie's computer, the hard drive from which held over 250,000 graphics files, including several thousand images of child pornography. Agents also seized five composition notebooks containing notes reflecting the type of content on various child pornography websites as well as instructions on how to access them. The notebooks contained references to child pornography files that franklee had posted to the NAMGLA website, girls' names, child pornography search terms, websites used to upload child pornography, and Christie's notes on various pictures and websites. In addition, agents discovered a collection of children's toys. Special Agent John Bennett interrogated Christie following the search. Christie, who was fifty, years old at the time of trial and has no children, explained that he was employed as a school bus driver for elementary and middle-school students, and that he used the toys to pacify children who became boisterous while riding the bus. Christie also admitted to submitting two particular posts to the NAMGLA website. One was titled nine-year-old in a supermarket and the other told of becoming sexually aroused while changing a baby's diaper.