URBANA, Illinois – A student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was arrested Thursday after admitting to University Police investigators that he was involved in the “trading” of pornographic images involving children.
Daniel Meyka, 19, was arrested at 9:10 a.m. Thursday at Saunders Hall, 902 W. College Court, Urbana, after detectives obtained a court-approved search warrant for his residence hall room.
Police were first notified of the crime when information was submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which passed the information to the Illinois Crimes Against Children Task Force. The tip indicated that someone had used a popular social media messaging app to upload the explicit images. The “hash values” of those images – a sort of digital fingerprint – matched the hash values of other files that previously had been identified as child pornography.
Further investigation revealed that the images were uploaded using an IP address assigned to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. With that and other information in hand, investigators were able to narrow down the list of potential users to Meyka.
When police served the search warrant on Thursday morning, Meyka told investigators that he had uploaded the images.
Two University Police detectives are assigned to and contribute a portion of their time to the Illinois Crimes Against Children Task Force, which is part of a national network of 61 coordinated task forces representing more than 4,500 federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The task force is dedicated to investigating, prosecuting, and developing effective responses to internet crimes involving children.
