December 16 – A 25-year-old Austin man has been indicted on child sexual abuse (CSAM) charges after a tip was filtered from a social media site to Austin police.
Jared Michael Bednar was arrested on December 11 during the execution of a search warrant at his residence. He made his initial appearance in Mower County court on Friday.
Bednar has been charged with distribution of pornographic work involving a child under 14 years of age and possession of pornographic work involving a child under 14 years of age. Both are crimes.
He has a first performance scheduled for December 26 at 10 a.m.
According to court documents, the first tip came from the social media platform Kik, which had reported that one of its users had uploaded more than 100 files containing suspected CSAM.
An APD detective noted that each cybertip had the same IP addresses and similar email addresses, and that subpoenas to Microsoft, Charter and Metronet identified a corresponding email address belonging to the username of “Jared Bednar.”
Information provided by the company also showed that two companies were involved in the uploads, but they were used by the same clearing service that Bednar worked for.
Neither company is involved.
Of the files reviewed by Kik, at least one of the files was confirmed to contain CSAM, a video sent via private messages from the suspected user to another.
Court records show that the detective obtained a search warrant for the Kik account associated with the uploads and on Nov. 20 discovered numerous CSAM files and noted that the IP address associated with the account was the same as specified by the cybertips.
When questioned by the detective during the execution of the search warrant, Bednar denied using the associated email address and acknowledged that he worked for the cleaning company in question.
He also allegedly admitted to cleaning up the two businesses.
Despite initially claiming that he had not used Kik in a while, Bednar then allegedly admitted that he had recently used the site to look up adult porn and had never actively searched for CSAM.
However, according to court documents, he allegedly admitted to seeing CSAM. When questioned further, Bednar told the detective that he had CSAM and that he would then send CSAM to other users.
At the same time, Bednar claimed that he received the files from others and that he was trying to gather evidence to report them later. A claim he repeated on December 12 in a recorded phone call from prison, in which he further claimed that he was keeping the files as evidence.
Court documents state that at no point did the detective see evidence that Bednar had attempted to report the CSAM, but did observe alleged chat messages from him requesting CSAM and distributing CSAM to other users.
During the search warrant, two iPhones, an HP laptop, an HP desktop tower, and an external Xbox hard drive were recovered and sent to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for forensic examination.
