Warning: This article contains discussion of child abuse which some readers may find distressing.
A man played a crucial role in his father’s arrest after stumbling upon a shocking revelation while assisting with his father’s phone.
In Florida, a man was taken aback by what he found when he offered to help his father with a technical issue.
Jared Follin, aged 30, attempted to assist his father, Gene Follin, who is 63 years old, in regaining access to his Gmail account after he was locked out.
Jared soon discovered the alarming reason behind his father’s inability to access his account.
He found that his father had nearly 1,000 files of child pornography in his possession.
Google had flagged the account due to illicit images stored in his Google Photos, as noted in the arrest affidavit.
Upon making this grim discovery, Jared reported the findings to law enforcement.
A month later, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children alerted the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children task force about a Google account raising red flags for uploading child pornography.
A sheriff’s office detective then informed the Kenneth City Police Department, resulting in a subpoena for the associated IP address, which confirmed Gene Follin as the account holder.
Subsequently, detectives secured a search warrant for Follin’s account, uncovering 952 files with inappropriate content involving minors.
These uploads are believed to have occurred between March 13, 2023, and September 10, 2024.
Some of the material featured girls as young as five years old.
Earlier this week, on Tuesday (January 28), Follin was apprehended for possession of child pornography. According to the arrest affidavit, he confessed to ‘saving child pornography’ during interrogation by the Kenneth City Police.
Follin is now confronting 20 felony charges, with each second-degree felony potentially resulting in up to 15 years of imprisonment.
Following his arrest, he was released on Thursday (January 30) after posting a $100,000 bond. Whether he has entered a plea remains uncertain.
Previously, in 2017, Follin created a GoFundMe campaign after experiencing a heart attack and undergoing open heart surgery.
The fundraiser depicted Follin as a father of three and a grandfather of three, describing him as ‘compassionate, dependable and kind’.
The description further stated: “’He is always there to make you smile and let you know that life is much more than the malarkey we each face every day.”