Sugar City man charged after deputies discovered he emailed child porn to himself from brother’s laptop
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SUGAR CITY – A 27-year-old Sugar City man has been arrested after Madison County Sheriff’s deputies investigated a cybertip of alleged child pornography being uploaded to a Google account.
According to court documents, in late October, four cybertips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, submitted by Google, detailed that various files had been uploaded to a Google account that contained explicit content involving children.
The document details some of the images, which include 39 images of child sexual abuse materials, child erotica and BDSM.
The children in the explicit content ranged in age from 1 to 10 years.
Included in the cybertips was an Internet Protocol (IP) Address, which was sent to the email service provider, Google, where deputies obtained a phone number, date of birth, and email address for Zachary Morris.
Deputies located a report of a traffic accident involving Morris, where the man’s address was obtained. Bodycam footage of the accident also helped identify Morris.
A search of Morris’s Google account also helped to confirm how Morris appeared after finding an image of the man on the account.
On Jan. 7, deputies obtained and performed a search warrant on Morris’s residence. Morris was taken to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office and interviewed about the alleged child porn.
Morris signed a Miranda Waiver and confirmed with deputies that the Google account was his, but had been shut down.
He believed that the accounts were shut down due to explicit content, but is unsure of the exact reason.
When asked about the child sexual abuse materials that were found, he told deputies, “The email came in.”
Seeking to clarify that statement, Morris said he had emailed himself from his brother’s computer, Jacob Morris, by selecting all the images on it and mailing them to him.
Jacob was arrested in early January after investigators with Idaho’s Crime Against Children Task Force discovered multiple images of alleged violent child porn. He has been charged with 10 felony counts of possession of child porn. He remains in Madison County Jail.
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The 27-year-old Zachary Morris stated his brother was unaware he had done this before both accounts were shut down. He had accessed his brother’s account to look for photos of a partner of his brother’s, but found child porn.
When asked to describe the images, he told deputies he did not want to talk about them.
Morris’s bail was set at $1 million, but was reduced to $500,000.
Morris is scheduled to appear before Magistrate Judge David Hunt for a preliminary hearing at 1:30 p.m. on March 11.