Former U.S. Customs official arrested in FBI child porn sting

Retired Homeland Security agent Richard Armendariz Sr., is lead out of the John Wood Federal Courthouse, on Tuesday, March 8, 2016, following a hearing on charges of child pornography. Retired Homeland Security agent Richard Armendariz Sr., is lead out of the John Wood Federal Courthouse, on Tuesday, March 8, 2016, following a hearing on charges of child pornography. Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 92 Caption Close Former U.S. Customs official arrested in FBI child porn sting 1 / 92 Back to Gallery

The FBI has arrested a retired U.S. Customs analyst as part of a massive investigation into child pornography whose users employed dark corners of the Internet to stay anonymous.

Richard Armendariz Sr. spent 42 years in what's now the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and had top secret clearance.

"There is a part of him that is completely unknown to his family," Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Thompson told U.S. Magistrate Judge John Primomo. "This man has had a demonstrated sexual interest in pre-pubescent children for 36 years."

Primomo denied bond for Armendariz, ruling he was not a flight risk but was a danger.

He's related to Albert Armendariz Sr., a civil rights leader and founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund for whom the new federal courthouse in El Paso is named.

RELATED: FBI charge S.A. men in massive child porn investigation

Richard Armendariz was arrested last week in San Antonio. At a bail hearing Tuesday, a woman testified that he molested her more than 30 years ago. Armendariz is one of nearly 215,000 people the FBI says it connected to a website it seized that made child porn available on what’s known as the Tor network.

The site is "Playpen," and the FBI admitted in court and court documents that it used malware to briefly take control of the site from Feb. 20, 2015 to March 4, 2015, in an effort to identify users before shutting it down. The Express-News was the first to report on the investigation's existence in Texas in this November story:

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