Former UoC student’s child porn trial underway

Whether or not a former University of the Cumberlands student is convicted of possessing child pornography will likely depend on whether a federal grand jury believes he actually knew the content of videos police discovered on his computer hard drive in fall of 2008 portrayed minors involved in sex acts.

That was the central theme of a defense cultivated by the attorney defending 23-year-old Sungkook Kim during the first day of testimony at his trial in U.S. District Court in London on Tuesday.

Kim, a South Korean citizen who was born in Thailand, last week pleaded guilty to almost every charge against him in a 25-count indictment that includes accusations that he attempted to blackmail a fellow female student, that he illegally accessed UofC computers and that he committed identity theft. He is fighting the lone remaining charge of possession of child pornography, which carries with it a possible 10-year prison term and $250,000 in fines.

Investigators first became interested in Kim after a fellow female student reported to police that she was the victim of an attempted extortion scheme via email sent from a Yahoo! Account in October of last year. Kim claimed to have sexually explicit video footage of her and threatened to distribute it to her friends and professors if she did not make another similar video of herself. In all, 21 emails were sent with the threats. Williamsburg Police, along with the help of the Kentucky Attorney General’s cybercrime unit, allegedly tracked the messages to Kim’s personal home computer, and a couple other computers on the University of the Cumberland’s campus.

In court on Tuesday, prosecutors began their case by calling to the stand Williamsburg Police Chief Wayne Bird. Bird recounted how he, with the help of an investigator from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Cybercrimes Division, was able to trace some of the emails to Kim’s apartment. With the aid of Tom Bell, a computer forensics expert, authorities were able to snare Kim by posing as the female victim and corresponding with him. Investigators obtained subpoenas to search records with New Wave Communications, Kim’s Internet service provider, and were able to obtain IP addresses and MAC addresses that traced at least some of the messages back to his personal computer. Bird said when Kim was questioned he admitted sending the emails and said he had an addiction to pornography.

Kim allowed police to have his computer equipment, including a one terabyte external hard drive. During a search of the hard drive, investigators stumbled upon several pornographic videos. In all, authorities say Kim had four short clips of the female student, who was 16 or 17 at the time the video was made, having sex with her boyfriend, who was 17. Two other videos were discovered that investigators claim are known pornographic videos, portraying children that were produced outside the country. One, a

28-minute-long clip, allegedly shows several adult males engaging in sexual intercourse with girls between the ages of three and seven-years-old. The other shows a girl from 10-13 years old in a shower.

The jury only got to see three short videos containing the victim and her boyfriend on Tuesday. Bird said Kim obtained the videos of the woman when she left her email account open on a University computer. She testified that she had sent them to her boyfriend when she was a freshman at the school and that Kim must have had them for quite awhile before sending them to her with the threats.

Those clips, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Denney argued, were child
pornography that Kim illegally possessed.

But Croley countered during cross-examination that it would have been difficult for his client to know that those involved in the videos were underage. For prosecutors to secure a conviction they have to prove Kim should have known the people portrayed in the videos were not adults when he downloaded or viewed them, then decided to keep them.

"Looking at that video it’s really hard to tell if we’re looking at minors or adults, isn’t that a fair statement?" Croley asked Bell.

"Yes, I would say it is."

Croley also noted the names of the video files were simply numbers, with no indication of their content.

"There is nothing at all that would lead anyone to believe these are minors engaged in sexual conduct."

While cross-examining Bird, Croley noted that technically, the victim and her boyfriend were in violation of child pornography laws by being in possession of the video while students at UofC. Bird said he wasn’t qualified to determine if that was the case.

The victim herself testified briefly Tuesday, saying the videos were made while she was in high school with a webcam and were never meant to be seen by anyone else.

"Why did you decide to make these videos?" Croley asked the girl, now a senior at the school.

"No reason really. Just something for us personally."

"It was just a mistake?" Croley followed.

"Yes," the girl said.

Denney said on Wednesday he intended to call more witnesses regarding the forensic examination of Kim’s computer and hard drive. Croley said he would likely have three witnesses testify for the defense. The trial is expected to wrap up Thursday morning.

Last Thursday Kim agreed to plead guilty to the other 24 criminal charges against him – 15 charges of extortion, seven counts of computer fraud and one charge of identity theft.

Kim was indicted on the charges in mid-December 2008 and has remained in jail since his arrest last November.
He faces up to two years in prison on each of the 15 extortion charges and up to $250,000 in fines for each. He could get up to five years in prison on the computer fraud charges and $250,000 fines and two years in prison on the identity theft charge.
After extensive questioning, U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove accepted Kim’s plea. He does not have a plea agreement in place with prosecutors.

Kim has been expelled from the University of the Cumberlands since the allegations against him surfaced.
Investigators claim Kim gained access to 97 separate accounts at the University by installing "key logger" software on computers at the school that would email back to him keystrokes made at the machines. Administrative as well as student accounts were compromised.