MT. ORAB, Ohio — The indictment of a Brown County man on 54 charges related to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials likely would not have happened without a tip from the social media giant X (formerly Twitter), according to the county prosecutor.
The people living along Moon Road, where deputies arrested 44-year-old Daniel Wright while serving a search warrant at his home, were baffled by the developments along their rural Mt. Orab road.
"I don't understand what's going through people's minds," neighbor Karen Shinkle said.
Shinkle said she lives a few homes down from the one Brown County deputies raided, and news of child sexual abuse materials being traded near kids she knows made her skin crawl.
She thought of her next-door neighbor's kids first.
"She's got five little ones in there ranging from 10 on down. We watch them constantly," she said.
County Prosecutor Zac Corbin said Wright acquired and shared the 27 videos deputies found on his phone from social media sites, primarily X and Telegram.
He said X staff had monitored the offending material and notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
NCMEC Exploited Children Division Director Jennifer Newman said their organization is built to receive tips in volume, pair them down, and get them where they are most useful.
"We filter that to local law enforcement," Newman said.
Corbin said in Wright's case X's tip filtered through the NCMEC to Ohio state law enforcement where officials tracked the IP address to Brown County allowing the Boone County Sheriff's Department's Internet Crimes Against Children division to begin their investigation.
The prosecutor said the number of tips related to child sexual abuse material has risen in recent years.
Newman said NCMEC receives reports from tech companies from all over the world.
"Last year we actually received 36 million cyber tip line reports which averages to 80 to 100,000 per day," she said.
Newman said US tech companies are required to report illegal materials on their websites but are not required to regularly monitor or search for that material resulting in a drastic difference in how effective sites are in stopping the flow of pictures and videos.
"A lot of companies that we probably all have in our hand or our purse, on our person, who have this opportunity to detect and report, and they're not doing that," she said. "So, when you ask is there under reporting? Absolutely, because nothing in the law requires them to scan or look for this."
Newman said NCMEC's latest report on which companies are succeeding or failing in reporting instances of child sexual abuse materials will be released April 14.
Wright was ordered held at the Brown County Jail on a $1 million bond.
Corbin said he would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
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