A man, who authorities say possessed more than 200 child pornography images, was arrested on an outstanding warrant, led police to several homes and eventually answered some questions from an undercover officer.
That led to a 7-hour search that culminated with two undercover officers placing cookies in the house, according to court documents. When police served the warrants, they seized “hundreds” of thousands of images, according to the document, obtained by the National Post.
Bruce Ward, 37, was arrested after someone became suspicious of an email that suggested Ward was looking for child porn. The email showed the beginning of a file called “sadism and masochism images,” the documents said. The email was sent from a University of Ottawa student’s account.
The two police officers then learned that Ward was collecting these images on an external hard drive and USB memory sticks, the documents said.
As they scoured the devices in search of more evidence, they discovered the other violations on the warrant.
Officers photographed box files and small files of child pornography with the “c:” directory before connecting the USB sticks and hard drives to the cloud, according to the documents.
An undercover officer then posed as an interested potential buyer of the images, according to the documents.
During the phone call, Ward talked about child pornography and younger girls, the documents said.
Ward’s family couldn’t be reached for comment on Monday.