A West Point staff sergeant has been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for distributing child pornography.
Patrick Edwin Gorychka, 37, of New Windsor, is accused of frequenting a chatroom that is used by those with sexual interests in children, and distributing photos and videos of children engaged in sex acts, according to the Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office in the southern New York district. The chatroom was on the platform, Kik, an instant messaging platform built especially for teens, according to the app’s website.
An undercover FBI employee, identified in a complaint as UC-1, introduced himself in the chatroom to Gorychka, who used the online username “epg84,” as a 48-year-old uncle who had engaged in sexual activity with his niece, according to the complaint. Gorychka, who called himself Eric G., allegedly asked for photos of the undercover agents’ niece.
Also in a chat, the FBI agent said he met a “pedo mom” in New York that “keeps kids of illegals while they work for a couple weeks (and) makes some $ on the side,” the complaint stated. In response, Gorychka said “omg that’s hot,” and allegedly asked the undercover agent to connect him with another user, UC-2, who went by the name Jane.
Gorychka chatted back and forth with UC-2 from around Oct. 31 through around Nov. 16. Gorychka allegedly confessed he was interested in “preteens” and said he wanted “to do everything” with them, adding that he “had a fantasy of being with a younger girl…the younger the better I guess,” according to the complaint.
He said to UC-2, “I heard that you could potentially facilitate certain things,” according to the complaint.
Gorychka allegedly requested in the chat to arrange a “similar setup” that the first FBI agent had described with the children of immigrants. “I have money,” Gorychka said, according to the complaint.
Gorychka transmitted two links to Mega, a New Zealand-based cloud storage platform that allows users to share electronically stored information, which included “hundreds of files,” images and videos of children engaging in sexually explicit activity, the complaint stated.
Gorychka was arrested on Dec. 4 and charged with distribution and receipt of child pornography. He could face a minimum of five and a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
The investigation is still ongoing, Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the FBI, West Point’s Criminal Investigation Division, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Town of New Windsor Police Department assisted with the investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcia S. Cohen is in charge of prosecuting the case being handled out of the office’s White Plains division.
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