The Impact of ID Theft: Spokane Firefighter to Sue Over False Child Porn Arrest

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawgster () gmail com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Via The Seattle-PI (AP).

[snip]

A firefighter who was arrested and accused by the Washington State Patrol
of possessing child pornography, then was released after investigators
determined he was innocent, says he will file a lawsuit.

"This still affects us daily. It caused severe damage," Fire Lt. Todd Chism
says. "We're doing our best to deal with it, but it has been very
difficult."

Patrol investigators said a credit card number linked Chism to a Yahoo
account that was used to download hundreds of explicit digital images.
After his arrest in January, some of his children's' friends were not
allowed to visit the Chisms' home.

"In good faith, our detectives believe they did the right thing," Capt.
Jeffrey DeVere said. "Nobody wants us to not do anything, or let children
be victims."

There has been no internal affairs investigation into how the case was
handled, DeVere said.

Marcus Lawson, a forensic expert and former federal agent hired by Chism's
lawyer and now the president of Global CompuSearch, concluded that the
evidence used to arrest Chism and search his home was "insufficient for a
search warrant, let alone an arrest warrant."

Lawson's sworn affidavit was sealed when it was filed March 4 in Thurston
County. Chism's lawyer, Carl Oreskovich, recently released 1,371 pages of
the records to The Spokesman-Review. Citing privacy concerns, some details
were withheld.

The case originated in the patrol's missing and exploited children unit
with a tip that included a Yahoo e-mail account associated with downloading
hundreds of digital images of child pornography.

Investigators found Todd and Nicole Chism's credit card had been used in
one of the Internet protocol addresses associated with the Yahoo account,
"but they couldn't definitively link the porn to the Chisms' computer or
home address or anywhere," DeVere said.

Detectives found fraudulent activity had been reported on three of the four
credit card numbers associated with the Chisms' Bank of America account but
not the fourth, which was the one used to buy the porn, DeVere said.

The investigative file includes a letter from Bank of America confirming
that a fraud complaint had been made for the fourth number in August 2007,
but patrol detectives did not receive the letter until after Chism's
arrest, DeVere said.

"When you have this type of crime, where time is of the essence for
evidence destruction, we have to do everything we can for the safety of
children and people," DeVere said. "We are going to investigate that crime
very vigorously to make sure that children are not exploited."

[end]

Link:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/380969_porncase29.html

It really gets under my collar when I read about these type of botched
"investigations".

- - ferg

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017)

wj8DBQFI4FXgq1pz9mNUZTMRAt1MAKDMVnSklrs7BHZgEl/IWpRZZOlvzACbBrqF
hIb4wZAVz42XFbqjYAqMK4o=
=u2Cu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.