Cryptocurrency Used to Purchase Child Pornography Admitted by Man

Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears expressed concern that a recent case may be the tip of the iceberg in terms of cryptocurrency being used to purchase child pornography. 55-year-old Julian Wachner is charged with 10 counts of having child pornography and one count for having cocaine after admitting to using digital currency to buy the material.

"For us this is new territory," Mears said.

The case began with a tip from a financial institution that allows people to buy and spend cryptocurrency. Without the tip, "they were able to provide us with a lot of information that really kind of began the opening steps where we knew we had a clear target," Mears said.

Detectives tracked down Wachner by following payments that traced back to him. When police arrested Wachner, court documents say he admitted to paying $840 to a website for child pornography. He also told detectives where to find a laptop and an external hard drive with the sexual abuse material on it.

When detectives opened up the files, they found hours of videos showing children as young as infants up to 16-years-old.

"This seems to be a way that more and more people are using cryptocurrency to acquire illicit things because they do think it's harder to trace. They do think it's harder to track down, so certainly this is not going to be the last time that we're going to deal with cases involving cryptocurrency," Mears said.

Child pornography is not the only thing people can buy illegally on the internet with cryptocurrency, Mears said. "It's commonly referred to as the dark web, but unfortunately there's a lot of things that you can get your hands on that are illegal on the dark web."

Wachner is currently out of jail on a $15,000 bond.