Brian Matthew Groo, 24, of Horsham, Horsham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States was arrested again. He was 19 when the Horsham Township Police Department and the Montgomery County Detective Bureau started investigating him.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service that offers personal cloud, cloud storage, file synchronization and client software. It is hosted by Dropbox, Inc., which was founded in May 2007 and is based in San Francisco, California, USA.
In May 2019, the Pennsylvania Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received a tip from the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) about a video and a still photo file Groo uploaded on Dropbox. The video and the photo file depicted child pornography involving children who appeared to be 10 or 11 years old.
When a search warrant was executed in Groo’s residence in Horsham on October 10, 2019, his cellphone was seized. A total of 499 images depicting children under the age of 18 engaging in sexual acts or poses were found in the cellphone.
A total of 37 image files and 32 video files in Groo’s Dropbox account also depicted child pornography. He told the detectives that while he was online on a chat website, he received links that contained child pornography from other users, downloaded the files and saved them to his Dropbox account.
On November 22, 2019, Groo was arrested. He was charged with two counts of criminal use of a communications facility, 65 counts of second-degree disseminating child pornography and 100 counts of second-degree possession of child pornography, which are all felony charges.
Bail was set for Groo at $100,000 when he was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Harry J. Nesbitt III. The Horsham man, who was prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors and internet usage or social media usage, was remanded to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Eagleville, Montgomery County after not being able to post bail.
On April 29, 2021, Groo pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography and criminal use of a communication facility. He was sentenced to 6-to-23-months at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility followed by five years’ probation as part of the plea agreement with prosecutors.
Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy required Groo to forfeit his cellphone, undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation and a sexually violent predator assessment and register as a Tier II sex offender for 25 years. He was prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors and unsupervised internet usage.
In exchange for the plea, a total of 165 other felony charges along with dozens of counts of possession of child pornography were dropped.
Kik
Kik is a freeware instant messaging mobile app that is available on iOS and Android operating systems. It was initially released on October 19, 2010.
On October 30, 2024, Montgomery County detectives received a cyber tip from the NCMEC about two videos of apparent child sexual abuse material. One of the videos depict the sexual abuse of a 10-month-old boy that had been uploaded and shared via Kik.
The videos, which appeared to be newly produced, were shared by a Kik user to other online accounts. The Montgomery County detectives, the NCMEX and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) traced the internet protocol address of the source to Groo’s residence in Horsham.
When the detectives served a search warrant, they found a hidden cellphone belonging to Groo, which he used to install Kik and share child pornography videos. On October 31, 2024, he was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Karen Eisner Zucker, who set bail at $2 million cash.
Groo was sent to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. At 11:45 a.m. on November 14, 2024, he will attend a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Todd Stephens.
CONAN Daily 