Operation “Chicken Hawk” Nets Seven in Monterey County

by Daniel Miranda , May 31, 2013

27 different agencies participated in Sweep

SALINAS—Authorities from Monterey County along with agents Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Homeland Security served six different search warrants in county and arrested seven men on child pornography charges.

Richard Howard Daly

The seven Monterey County men were; Howard Daly, 56, Curt Tamanaha, 30, Paulino Maldonado, 29, Miguel Marquez Rodriguez, 26 and Jamie Maldonado, 21 all of Salinas. There were two other Monterey County men arrested, they were Eric Olsen, 40 of Marina and Jorge Vargas, 24 of Castroville.

Curt Tamanaha

The search warrants were issued after the Silicon Valley Internet Crimes against Children Task Force (SVICAC) noticed that a cluster of child pornography was detected in that part of the County.

Paulino Maldanado

The Task Force along with the 26 different agencies began the sweep early Wednesday morning. Evidence was found on the hard drives of the suspect’s computers that linked them to distributing and possessing child pornography.

“We initialized “Operation Chicken Hawk” looking for these suspects to arrest them, we arrested five people in Salinas and two in Monterey County.” Salinas Police Officer Miguel Cabrera said, “ All these cases were individual cases, they were in no way related to each other and they all had evidence of producing, processing and sharing child pornography.”

Migual Marques Rodriguez

The SVICAC was developed 10 years ago and is only one of 61 around the nation targeting suspects of child pornography by peer-to-peer file sharing and chatroom decoy operations.

A key feature that the task force has in it’s arsenal is a mobile forensics lab that allows investigators to drive up to the suspects home, seize the hard drive and immediately searching for the evidence. This type of evidence search in the past would have taken months but thanks to today’s technology the hard drives can be search in real time.