FBI arrests Shorewood man on child porn charges

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Christopher Kice, 41, of the 1100 block of Callaway Drive West in Shorewood, was arrested Monday night by special agents assigned to the Chicago FBI’s Innocent Images Task Force, authorities said Thursday.

Updated: November 4, 2011 10:42AM

SHOREWOOD — A local man charged with possession of child pornography will appear in court Friday after being arrested at his home earlier this week, the FBI said.

Christopher Kice, 41, of the 1100 block of Callaway Drive West in Shorewood, was arrested Monday night by special agents assigned to the Chicago FBI’s Innocent Images Task Force, authorities said Thursday.

Kice is charged with one count of possession of child pornography, which is a felony offense, authorities said.

In its statement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation cited a criminal complaint filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Investigators were first alerted to Kice’s possible involvement in the collection of child pornography by his employer, an unnamed Chicago-area law firm where Kice was employed in the information technology department, the FBI said, citing the complaint.

“When co-workers noticed that numerous large files with suspicious sounding names, such as ‘kiddie’ and ‘pre-teen,’ had been downloaded on a company computer then transferred to removable storage devices, they notified the (Innocent Images Task Force),” the FBI statement said.

Initial investigation by task force personnel developed probable cause to conduct a search of Kice’s residence, which took place March 17, pursuant to a federal search warrant, the FBI said. Several computer hard drives and other digital storage devices were seized.

On the seized drives and devices, the FBI found numerous images and videos of what appeared to be child pornography, the bureau said.

Kice, who is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, is scheduled for a 2 p.m. Friday appearance before Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez in Chicago. Kice was ordered held without bond, pending Friday’s appearance.

The bureau asks that anyone recognizing Kice, or anyone having information that might be relevant to this investigation, call the Chicago FBI at 312-421-6700.

The bureau’s website, www.fbi.gov, gives an overview and history of the Innocent Images National Initiative.

The initiative, a component of the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Program, is an investigative operation to combat the proliferation of child pornography and child sexual exploitation facilitated by computer, the website said.

The initiative was established in 1996. The special unit handled 113 cases throughout the bureau that year. By 2002, the number jumped to 2,370, according to FBI statistics cited in Herald-News archives.

Between fiscal years 1996 and 2007, there was a 2,062 percent increase in the number of Innocent Images cases opened — 113 to 2,443 — throughout the FBI, the bureau said on its website.