A Butler man has been charged by police after they found over a thousand images of child pornography on his computer hard drive.
65-year-old Thomas Perantoni faces 20 counts of sexual abuse of children and possession of child pornography as the result of an investigation that began back in February.
Police were contacted by a computer repair business that Perantoni had approached to switch his old computer hard drive to a new one. Butler Township police then seized the pc with the old hard drive and search the computer and the old hard drive for images and videos as well as checking the defendants online history.
There was no illegal activity found in the online history although he had visited several adult porn websites including https://www.m-porn.xxx/, however the same cannot be said about the computer itself, as during a deep search of the hard drive they found the incriminating images. Despite what many believe deleting an image or video from your pc using the normal methods doesn’t fully remove it from your pc and someone who knows what they are doing like a computer technician can retrieve deleted files, images and videos which is what happened in this case.
Perantoni was arraigned and placed in the Butler County Prison on $10,000 bond.