A Lander man faces up to 40 years in prison and $500,000 in fines for allegedly traveling to Florida with the intent of having sex with a child and for producing child pornography.
Garrett Thomas Findlay, 24, pleaded guilty on Nov. 29 to one count of traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and four counts of production of child pornography.
Findlay was indicted by a federal grand jury on July 20 and his sentencing has been set for Feb. 17.
According to the court documents, in October, a tip was submitted to the CyberTip Report — a service that collects tips about possible crimes against children — about a user on the social messaging app Kik who shared 14 files of suspected child pornography with another user or group of users sometime between Aug. 26 and Aug. 28, 2020. All of the files depicted prepubescent girls being made to participate in sexually explicit activity.
Kik supplied law enforcement with information about the user’s account, including IP addresses and the fact the person was using a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus cellphone to access the account through the Verizon network.
Law enforcement officers contacted Verizon, which provided a phone number for that particular phone that was Findlay’s number. The company also confirmed Findlay had that same type of phone as that identified by Kik.
Officials tracked one of the IP addresses to a residence in Laramie. There, they spoke with the property owner, who rented an apartment to Findlay from July to mid-December. In mid-December, Findlay moved back into his parents’ home in Lander.
Another IP address connected to the Kik account was found to be at Findlay’s mother’s home in Lander.
Police executed a search warrant for the home in early March, where they obtained Findlay’s cellphone and detained the man. He was transported to the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, where he made several admissions to possessing child pornography on his phone, using Kik to send and receive child pornography and ultimately admitting the account under investigation was his.
When accessing his phone, investigators found 22 images and 10 videos of child pornography. Findlay told officers the last time he had viewed the material was the previous night, when he’d received “some” images via the social media app Whisper.
He told agents he’d used Whisper numerous times to send and receive child pornography.
It was found that on or around March 1, Findlay used Whisper to send 18 images of child pornography to another user on the app.
