A convicted sex offender is going back to prison for a long time after a tip from Google led to his conviction.
A convicted sex offender is going back to prison for a long time after a tip from Google led to his conviction on child pornography charges.
Federal prosecutors say 47-year-old Alan Kendrick — described in a court appearance earlier this year as a “danger to the community” — has been ordered to serve 30 years in prison after admitting he received and distributed images of child pornography.
Besides the time behind bars, upon his eventual release from prison Kendrick will also be on supervised release for the rest of his life.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Kendrick was a registered sex offender on parole when Google reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in December that six images of suspected child pornography had been “associated” with a Google account.
When the center turned that report over to local police, a detective with the Ceres Police Department, a small city about 95 miles east of San Francisco, determined that the Google account had been accessed from homes in nearby Modesto and Escalon.
Kendrick was a registered sex offender on GPS location monitoring, so investigators used GPS records to confirm that he been at the Modesto and Escalon locations when the accounts had been accessed.
As part of plea deal with federal prosecutors, Kendrick admitted that between June and December 2013 he received and distributed images of child pornography. In pleading guilty in May, he also admitted to engaging in a pattern of abuse or exploitation of a minor.
After Kendrick was sentenced, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Todd Irinaga said in a statement:
“This case is another example of the successful partnership among the corporate, nonprofit, and law enforcement community. The report of Kendrick’s illicit activity, even though he was still on parole, was immediately routed to the Sacramento Valley High Tech Crimes Task Force. The team, in conjunction with California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and with significant assistance from the Ceres Police Department’s High Tech Crime unit, investigated this horrible crime and ensured successful prosecution of Kendrick for his crime that victimized innocent children.”
Google says on its “Google Sites Program Policies” site that it has a “zero- tolerance policy against child sexual abuse imagery.” And, Google warns:
“When we are aware of child sexual abuse imagery on this product, that content will be removed and we will report it to the appropriate authorities.”
The organization that federal authorities say took the initial report — The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — describes itself as nation’s clearinghouse on issues involving sexually exploited children.
The center says since its CyperTipLine was launched in 1998, through June of this year it has received more than 2.5 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation.
John Marshall is an SFBay editor and producer and writer for San Francisco’s KGO Radio. Follow him on Twitter@breakingnewsman.
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