A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for a Stroud man arrested by OSBI agents in July on two felony counts dealing with child pornography.
John Mack Byrd., Jr., 43, was formally charged July 29 in Lincoln County District Court with possession of child pornography and using access to computers to violate Oklahoma State statutes.
Special Judge Emily Mueller scheduled Byrd’s preliminary hearing for 1:30 p.m. March 30.
ByrdwasarrestedJuly26 by agents with the OSBI. The Stroud Police Department and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office reportedly assisted the investigation.
Byrd appeared July 27 before Associate District Judge Sheila Kirk and she sethisbondat$100,000.He was ordered to reappear on Aug. 1 and made his initial appearance at that time.
On Oct. 15, he appeared before Judge Mueller. She scheduled his pre-preliminary hearing for 1:30 p.m. Nov. 17.
The first felony accuses Byrd of possessing child pornography, a felony, on about March 4, 2022, in LincolnCountybypossessing a cellular phone with images consisting of child pornography.
In Count 2 against Byrd, he is charged with communicating with and retrieving data from computer systems orcomputernetworks, known as Mega and Dropbox for the purpose of such access to retrieve, obtain and store images consisting of child pornography.
In a probable cause affidavit, it states on July 1, 2021OSBI Special Agent Rachell Savory was assigned an Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) investigation that was initiated by Dropbox and reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
A cyber tip indicated that Dropbox reported user with screen/user name John Byrd registered an account email address that traced to Byrd and uploaded one familiar child pornography file to his account on around June 10, 2021.
The affidavit states that Savory reviewed a NCMEC cyber tipline report and the file that Dropbox provided.
The file reportedly contained pornographic images, the agent stated in the affidavit.
According to the affidavit, the Dropbox account was at an IP address that was allocated to Windstream Services, LLC. It wasdeterminedtheaccount subscriber was John M. Byrd with a Stroud Street address in Lincoln County. A further utility inquiry verified the utilities were registered to Byrd and an inquiry of vehicles registered to Byrd identified one vehicle registered to him at that Stroud street address.
Savory reported that on March 4, 2022 she interviewed Byrd at his residence in Stroud. She stated he waived his Miranda Rights and admitted to the agent owning the email address she had earlier identified as belonging to him.
The affidavit also stated he admitted accessing child pornography while he used methamphetamine and that he accessed the internet and pornography sites from an Android cellular phone.
Savory said an on-site preview of Byrd’s cell phone didn’t readily locate the child pornography on the devices but that the preview of Byrd’s cell phone indicated he recently searched for and viewed pornography with applications known by investigators to be commonly associated with the downloadandshareofchild pornography.
The agent, on July 26, 2022 reviewed the forensic examination results of Byrd’s cell phone. She states in the affidavit that installed applications included Meg and Dropbox.
She reported at least 26 files of suspected child pornography were located on his cell phone.