A 21-year-old Minot man is charged with possessing child pornography.

David Alexander Reed, who has been an active duty U.S. Air Force member, is scheduled to make an initial appearance in district court in Minot on Monday morning. He is charged with nine Class C felonies, each carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He could also be ordered to register as a sex offender.

According to court documents, Reed uploaded five sexually explicit videos and two sexually explicit Excel files of girls between the ages of 12 and 14 to a Dropbox account in August 2016. Reed would have been 20 at the time.

The Minot Police Department first received a tip about the child porn from the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigations Crimes Against Children Task Force, which initially received it from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The police department confirmed that Reed’s email address was a match to the one associated with the Dropbox account. They also found an online resume associated with the email address for a David Reed from Clinton Township, Mich. The phone number on the resume matched a Minot address. The Air Force confirmed that the address associated with the phone number belonged to active duty Air Force member David Reed. Police obtained a search warrant for Reed’s residence and searched his apartment in October, but did not immediately find any child pornography. Reed claimed he had shared some “fake child pornography” with others online and has uploaded videos and photos shared by others online to the Dropbox account.

Minot police obtained a search warrant for Dropbox on Nov. 15, 2016. The company confirmed the name on the account belonged to David Reed, with the associated email address and a start for the subscription date. Dropbox declined to send child porn content outside of California.

Minot police then sought assistance from another agency and obtained a federal warrant. Minot police obtained the associated files from Reed’s account in December and identified several of them as images of girls between the ages of 12 and 14. Others contained pornographic images but police could not tell how old the people in them were.

A complaint against Reed was filed with the court on April 13, 2017. Reed signed a promise to appear on April 18 and was granted bond.

– Andrea Johnson