JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 21-year-old Palm Coast man pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of receiving child pornography over the Internet.
Kamil Mezalka faces five to 20 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, and a potential life term of supervised release when he's sentenced. The plea agreement also requires Mezalka to forfeit his computers and other digital media. His sentencing date has not yet been set.
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According to court documents, on March 15, an FBI agent in Philadelphia began an undercover Internet investigation to identify people using a file sharing program to obtain and share child pornography. The agent logged into the program and saw that someone using a particular screen name was logged into the network.
The agent browsed the user's shared directory and saw that more than 4,000 files were being shared therein, many of which contained titles and descriptions of child pornography and the sexual abuse of children. The investigation revealed that during the time frame of the download sessions, the IP address being used was issued to an account registered to someone at a Palm Coast home where Mezalka lived.
On May 8, FBI agents executed a federal search warrant at the home, and as agents went inside, Mezalka came out of a second-floor bedroom, quickly turned, went back inside the same bedroom and closed the door.
Despite repeated commands to come out of the bedroom, Mezalka remained in the bedroom and proceeded to use a Samurai sword in an attempt to destroy his computers and compact disks. During the search, the agents seized, among other things, a desktop computer and a laptop computer. Both of the hard drives were damaged by Mezalka's use of the sword.
Investigators said one of the hard drives contained more than 12,000 images and more than 3,000 videos, of which at least 500 images and 100 videos depicted child pornography. During an interview, Mezalka admitted, among other things, to having a file sharing program on his computer that he used to download pornography, to include child pornography.