Port St. Lucie resident James Hurley charged with 88 counts related to child pornography

ST. LUCIE COUNTY— A 21-year-old man who police said stored 44 digital files depicting child pornography on his Dropbox account was arrested by the U.S. Federal Marshal Service Monday.

Port St. Lucie police issued a warrant March 14 for the arrest of James Hurley, of Port St. Lucie, after an investigation that began when Dropbox alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children hotline in January 2016 that a user was storing child pornography in its cloud storage.

The account rendered an IP address that showed it was being accessed in Port St. Lucie.

Hurley was charged with 44 counts of possession of child pornography and 44 counts of transmission of child pornography by electronic device or equipment

He is being held on a $880,000 bond — $10,000 per count.

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Between May 2015 and November 2015, 11 images were uploaded to Hurley's account, according to police reports. The images depicted pornography of children between 2 and 8 years old.

In October 2017, police received the results of a search warrant on Hurley's Dropbox account, which yielded the discovery of 41 pornographic images and three videos depicting children mainly between the ages of 2 and 6 years old, according to reports.

Police said Hurley transmitted the images to Dropbox's sharing service, which allows users to send files to anyone through links.

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In an interview with police March 13, Hurley admitted he used his Dropbox account to upload the images and videos, which he received on his cell phone from multiple chat rooms, according to reports.

Marshals executed the arrest warrant Monday. Hurley was transported to the St. Lucie County Jail about 4:15 p.m.

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