US officials’ alert leads to arrest of Thai photographer on child porn

Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) officers arrested a Thai photographer at his home in the central province of Samut Sakhon on Saturday for possession of child pornography.

The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), based in the US, reached out to the Thailand Internet Crimes Against Children Unit after discovering child pornography on a cloud storage account belonging to the Thai man, later identified as 28 year old Kraisorn.

CCIB officers conducted a further investigation into the case and gathered all evidence before issuing an arrest warrant for Kraisorn. His arrest was subsequently made on Saturday, August 30, at his home in the Aom Noi district of Samut Sakhon. Police then seized his mobile phone and an external hard disk where he stored the illegal child pornography.

CCIB officers investigated Kraisorn’s mobile phone and found that he was a member of a child pornography group on an application for group communication called Band. More than 4,000 files of child pornography were found on the hard disk.

Kraisorn revealed that he was a freelance photographer offering photoshoot services for the cosplay community, not nude photoshoots or child pornography production. Kraisorn admitted that he liked child pornography but insisted he never sold it. He kept the explicit videos only for himself.

Kraisorn was charged under Section 287/1 of the Criminal Law: possession of child pornography. The penalty is imprisonment of up to seven years, a fine of up to 140,000 baht, or both.

Police will conduct more investigations into Kraisorn’s claims. He will face more charges if he is found to have been selling pornography or tricking any minors into pornography production.

In a related report, a half-Thai half-German man was sentenced to 25 years and six months in jail for creating, processing, and distributing child pornography. The suspect also sexually assaulted his daughter, aged only seven, and shared her explicit pictures and videos online.

His arrest was made after an alert from German police as the suspect distributed that child porn on a dark website based in Germany.