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Police: Mesa church worker accused of downloading child pornography

Posted at 11:47 AM, Feb 23, 2017
and last updated 2017-02-23 19:45:27-05

Mesa police have arrested a man after finding thousands of files of child pornography on his computer.

Court records show that police arrested 40-year-old Matthew Majesta Mesnard on February 16 at his home near Greenfield Road and University Drive. They found out that he downloaded over 3,700 files containing child pornography.

Mesa police report that they were monitoring the peer file sharing network 'bit torrent' a common place for people to share digital files containing child porn. Law enforcement has created software that identifies child pornography files that are being shared and captures the internet addresses and the downloads.

Police say that between December 20 and December 26 a total of 3,742 files were flagged as child porn. Investigators had a sample of those files looked at to determine the age of people involved in the videos. Medical experts conclude that some of the children depicted in the images were less than five-years-old. 

Police located the physical address and arrested Mesnard at his home. They also seized a laptop computer they believe also contains child pornography videos.

Mesnard listed his occupation as a custodian at a Mesa area church.

He's been charged with ten counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.