SAN FRANCISCO – A joint investigation by the FBI and the San Francisco Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) unit led to the arrests of two California residents allegedly involved in a child pornography ring that reached past state and national lines, authorities said.
40-year-old Kori Nicole Ellis was arrested in April after police searched Ellis’s home with a warrant, and found hundreds of images and videos of child porn on her thumbdrive and laptop. Some of the pornography involved children as young as one-year-old having sex with adults, police said.
Investigators later found that Ellis had been coercing several underage minors throughout different states into sending her sexually explicit images of themselves. Investigators also discovered that Ellis was part of an online community whose members regularly shared child porn and discussed topics related to pedophilia, police said.
According to police, one chat was with a couple in the United Kingdom. Investigators allege that Ellis successfully directed the couple to sexually molest their infant child on multiple occasions. In May, after investigators identified the couple, British law enforcement raided the couple’s home and found five underage minors. An investigation in the U.K. is ongoing.
On Friday, Aug. 28, FBI and San Francisco ICAC investigators executed a Federal search warrant at the home of Patrick Harvey, 29, of Novato. Harvey, whose case is still under seal in Northern California District Court, is suspected of having met Ellis to view and trade porn. He is being held in federal custody, police said.
Ellis has been charged in San Francisco Superior Court with possession of child porn, possession of more than 600 files of child porn, and possession of child porn involving sado-masochism. In early August, Ellis was federally indicted in U.S. District Court of Northern California for possession, distribution, and production of child porn. Ellis remains in custody.
