ROY, Utah — A registered sex offender in Roy has been released from custody following a new arrest that found him to be in possession of pornographic images involving children.
Ryan Ingles, 50, was arrested Tuesday on 10 charges of sexual exploitation of a minor.
The Roy Police Department was first notified about additional sexual images found on Amazon Photos back in May by the Utah Attorney General's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit. In all, there were 262 photos reported by Amazon.
“Different Internet providers, they have software that will flag photographs,” said Stuart Hackworth with the Roy City Police Department.
A spokesperson with Amazon told FOX 13 News that the company monitors Amazon Photos for child sexual abuse material using industry-standard cloud-based hash-matching tools that protect customer privacy but also allow detection of disturbing images.
According to the arrest documents, many of the photos in question showed naked young girls in compromising positions. In late July, an investigation into the Amazon account where the sexually explicit photos were stored led to Ingles' home in Roy.
“Our investigators are looking into see if there’s anything in the photographs that would indicate or help identify a victim or their location,” said Hackworth.
On Monday, an officer and detective with Roy police went to Ingles' home where he admitted to owning the Amazon account, although he claimed to have been locked out and denied that the sexual images were his.
After serving a search warrant, police seized Ingles' phone which allegedly contained the child sex abuse images matching the ones provided by Amazon.
“It does weigh heavy, but there’s also a lot of satisfaction with these cases where we can take some action and make an arrest,” said Hackworth.
Despite pleading guilty to similar charges in 2014 which saw Ingles sentenced to 1-15 years in prison and fined $10,000, he was released from custody following this week's arrest after agreeing, among many conditions, to appear at all court proceedings and a promise to not commit any criminal offense.
“In this case we would call this a tertiary prevention,” said Laurieann Thorpe with Prevent Child Abuse Utah. “When harm has already been done, we want to make sure to prevent harm from happening again.”
Thorpe described her initial reaction to this case as “a sense of horror, frustration, anger, and an instinct to protect children.”
“The more people who are caring and protective and compassionate who have eyes on kids, and who are making sure that they are safe, the better,” she said.
Ingles was no longer being actively supervised by Adult Probation and Parole. According to the Department of Corrections, which manages the state’s Sex Offender Registry, “ensuring an offender is registered and monitoring compliance is the responsibility of local law enforcement agencies.”
