Wednesday, February 16, 2000
Man pleads guilty to child porn
Feds: He hid images with encryption
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A Forest Park resident pleaded guilty Monday to possession of child pornography after the FBI defeated his efforts to hide dozens of images on his computer hard drive.
Terry A. Herzog, 52, of Waycross Road was released on his promise to return to court in a couple of months when U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott sentences him.
Tuesday, his attorney, H. Louis Sirkin, said this was Mr. Herzog's first child pornography offense and he probably faces eight to 18 months in prison.
U.S. Attorney Sharon J. Zealey and Sheri A. Farrar, agent in charge of Cincinnati's FBI office, reconstructed the investigation this way:
• An undercover Florida law enforcement agent received child pornography through American Online several times in 1994 from Mr. Herzog.
• Mr. Herzog hid his identity with a screen name and turned to encryption to hide dozens of pornographic files on his hard drive when he learned the FBI was asking about him.
• After the FBI's national anti-
porn program, “Innocent Images,” cracked the AOL screen name, Cincinnati agents searched Mr. Herzog's home and seized his Macintosh computer in September 1995.
• Agents realized that Mr. Herzog had encrypted the contents of his hard drive, and they sent the computer to the FBI's Computer Analysis Response Team in Washington, D.C. There, the encryption was cracked and dozens of Internet images — of minors in sexually explicit conduct — were found.
“I'm glad the bureau stuck with it,” Ms. Zealey said. “It wasn't an easy case.”
Tuesday, Agent Edward P. Woods said the delay between search and plea included two years to get to Mr. Herzog's machine and past the passwords and encoding protecting the illicit secret.
There also were months of negotiations leading to Monday's court appearance.
Even so, Mr. Sirkin called the four years between search and indictment and more than five years since the case began “unconscionable.”
AOL is not a defendant. Federal law generally exempts such Internet providers from crimes committed by customers, just as it does not hold telephone companies accountable for crimes committed by callers.
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