Thumb drive at Alaska hotel leads to arrest thousands of miles away in Texas, feds say
A USB drive discovered in the business center of an Alaska hotel led to the arrest of a Texas man on suspicion of possessing child pornography, federal prosecutors said.
Scott O’Toole, 60, has been charged with one count of possession of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska said in a Feb. 5 news release.
O’Toole is from Joshua, Texas, but was staying at the hotel while temporarily working in Fairbanks as a school bus driver in November and December, prosecutors said.
A defense attorney wasn’t listed in court records the morning of Feb. 6.
Fairbanks police were contacted the first week of December after the USB drive was found in the hotel business center, according to a court filing. The person who made the report said the drive “contained explicit images of minor children,” the filing said.
Police turned the USB over to federal agents, who connected it to O’Toole, including through a W-9 tax form stored on the drive, according to the filing.
The drive also had about “19 images and 7 videos consistent with child sexual abuse material,” including some images “suspected at this time to have been produced by the subject” outside of Alaska, according to the court filing.
O’Toole was in Alaska as a contract employee for a national contracting agency, and he left the state soon after the USB drive was found, according to officials.
Law enforcement officials tracked him down in Texas “within 24 hours of the FBI’s review of the USB drive” and arrested him soon after, according to prosecutors.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Anchorage Field Office is investigating, with help from Fairbanks police and state troopers in Texas, and it’s asking anyone with information about O’Toole while he was in Alaska to come forward.
Joshua, Texas, is about a 26-mile drive south from Fort Worth.
.JPG)