Brian Groo, 21, of Horsham.
A Horsham Township man is heading to county jail after pleading guilty on Thursday to distributing child pornography.
Brian Groo, 21, entered guilty pleas on April 29 to one count of distribution child pornography and one count of criminal use of a communication facility, stemming from a joint investigation by the Horsham Township Police Department and Montgomery County Detective Bureau in late 2019. As part of the plea agreement with prosecutors, Groo was sentenced to six-to-23-months at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, followed by five years’ probation.
As part of the sentence, Groo will have to register as a Tier II sex offender for 25 years and undergo both a psycho-sexual evaluation and a sexually violent predator assessment, according to court records. Additionally, Groo is required to forfeit his cellphone and is prohibited from unsupervised internet usage and unsupervised contact with minors.
Groo will be immediately eligible for the jail’s work release program when it resumes, however it is currently shut down as part of Montgomery County’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A total of 165 other felony charges, including additional counts of disseminating child pornography and criminal use of a communication facility — along with dozens of counts of possession of child pornography — were dropped in exchange for the plea.
According to the release from the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, the investigation was launched on Sept. 17, 2019 after an investigator with the Pennsylvania Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children stating that a Dropbox user had uploaded a video and still-image depicting sex acts between an adult and a child who appeared to be 10-years-old. Investigators traced the associated IP address to a residence in Willow Grove, and then to the 200 block of Maple Avenue in Horsham, after the host family had moved.
On Oct. 10, 2019, Horsham Township Police and ICAC Task Force members executed a search warrant on the Maple Avenue home. Amongst the items seized was a cell phone allegedly belonging to then-19-year-old Brian Groo, which was found to contain 499 images of child pornography, the release states. Additionally, investigators executed a search warrant on Groo’s Dropbox account, which allegedly uncovered an additional 37 images and 32 videos depicting child pornography, according to the release.
As a result of the investigation, Groo was arrested Nov. 22, 2019 and charged with 100 felony counts of possession of child pornography, 65 felony counts of disseminating child pornography and two felony counts of criminal use of a communications facility.
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