On Wednesday, Sept. 11, members of the Price City Police Department, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, Nevada Homeland Security Investigations and Utah State University Eastern Police Department arrested and booked a USUE student on charges of sexual exploitation of a minor.

Isaiah Jay Carter, 18, was booked into the Carbon County Jail on Sept. 11 following the service of a search warrant and seizure of his electronic devices, which according to the arrest report were found to contain at least 96 files tagged as potential child sex abuse materials (CSAM). 

The investigation into Carter began around Sept. 4, when Detective Cameron Sartori was contacted by Investigator MacKenzie Miller from the DCSO, informing Sartori that DCSO had received a “cybertip” regarding an individual who had potentially uploaded CSAM to their Amazon Photos cloud storage.

The arrest report explains what a cybertip is,” ‘Cybertip’ refers to a report generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when an individual or an electronic service provider such as Meta Platforms or Snapchat detects the presence of CSAM on their platforms.”

Detective Sartori, Investigator Miller and Special Agent Tracy met at the Price City Police Department after acquiring two search warrants, one to produce Carter’s class schedule and the other to seize and search Carter’s electronic devices. They were also joined by USU Police Sergeant Tana Christensen and Officer Isaiah Palmer.

The Officers made contact with Carter before escorting him back to his dorm room. Special Agent Tracy seized an iPad Mini, a Kindle Fire and an iPhone 12 to scan through using Cellebrite, a digital forensics tool.

According to the arrest report,” Investigator Miller asked Isaiah directly if he had ever viewed or possessed child pornography. Isaiah answered, “Um, possibly yes.” After explaining how we were made aware of Isaiah possessing CSAM when asked, Isaiah admitted he had used his Amazon Photos account to upload CSAM. During the subsequent interview, Isaiah went on to admit to using “MEGA” to download pornography.”

Mega is a cloud-based file-sharing software that offers users privacy measures such as end-to-end encryption, a built-in VPN and the ability to access files from anywhere.

“Isaiah admitted to intentionally searching for pornographic material but claimed he was not searching for CSAM, but claimed to have been searching for age-appropriate material. When asked about what he thought of the CSAM files he had acquired and viewed, Isaiah stated they disgusted him.” reads the report,” However, when asked what he had done with these files, Isaiah stated he did not delete them from his device. When asked why, Isaiah stated he was a lazy person and simply did not delete them.”

This prompted Detective Sartori to question Carter’s initial statement about being “disgusted” by CSAM, stating,” This stood out to me as very odd considering Isaiah’s statement about the CSAM bothering him. I believe any reasonable and prudent person who had been browsing the internet and stumbled upon obvious CSAM, they would have been appalled and quickly deleted said files.”

Following the scanning of the devices, 96 files were flagged for potentially being CSAM. Sartori returned to the room, asking Carter why he was in possession of so much CSAM. To which Carter offered no clear answer.

Authorities then arrested and booked Carter into the Carbon County Jail. Carter has been charged with 10 counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor; a second-degree felony.