Arizona fire department employee indicted on child pornography charges
An Arizona fire department employee was indicted on 15 charges related to child pornography, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Agustin Sauceda, an employee of the Eloy Fire District at the time, was charged with nine counts of producing and attempting to produce child pornography, five counts of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography, the Department of Justice said.
The indictment alleged that Sauceda, a 38-year-old Casa Grande resident, produced child pornography of a female minor between August 2022 and July 2024.
Investigators with the Department of Homeland Security discovered Sauceda’s activities on June 1 while searching file-sharing site BitTorrent. They identified the IP address associated with the files containing child pornography as Sauceda’s, according to court documents obtained by The Republic.
The materials sent through BitTorrent appeared to show multiple minors with ages estimated to range from three to 10, the documents state.
After a search warrant was conducted at Sauceda’s residence, While executing a search warrant at Sauceda’s home, investigators found a black “go bag” with a phone with thousands of child pornography files saved to an internal SD card.
The report indicated that 3,000 files were of a single girl, confirmed to be a minor by her mother. Her mother said she was regularly at Sauceda’s residence, according to the report.
Some of the files showed the girl in the bathroom of Sauceda’s residence, and investigators found a hidden camera in this bathroom, according to the court documents.
Sauceda faces a maximum of almost 400 years in prison and millions in fines. Each charge carries a lifetime of supervised release, the Justice Department added.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Agustin Sauceda indicted on 15 charges of child pornography
