UF student and Shands employee charged with possession of child pornography

A cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led to the arrest of a UF student last Thursday.

Gainesville Police Department officers arrested 21-year-old James Major on 27 counts of possession of child pornography and one count of unlawful use of a two-way communication device.

According to the suspect’s LinkedIn, he was a patient care assistant at Shands and was a pre-med major in biochemistry and psychology.

The arrest report states that NCMEC received a cyber tip from Google indicating that one of its user accounts uploaded and stored 17 videos related to child exploitation between June 26 and June 27. In addition to the cyber tip, Google later reported 36 additional cases of child abuse involving content in the suspect’s Google Drive.

According to the arrest report, Major claimed he was “out of his mind” after viewing the content and saving it to his Google Drive.

In a GPD press release, Major claimed he did not recognize the email addresses from the cyber tip. He then claimed that the account was actually his, but that it was a “one-off incident involving illegal content involving prepubescent children.” He also said he had sexually communicated with self-identified minors in the past and had been sent nude pictures of them, the release said.

Major reportedly claimed to have received the 17 images reported by Google from Telegram, a messaging app.

Through a series of investigations related to the user’s IP addresses, which were initially provided to the police in the cybertip, the police were able to identify the suspect as Major.

The GPD Internet Crimes Against Children Unit executed a search warrant Thursday at Major’s home, where he was arrested.

According to the arrest report, Major told an acquaintance that he had child sexual abuse material on his device, but deleted some of the content from it. The acquaintance submitted the cyber tip to NCMEC and reported this information.

According to the arrest report, Major has been storing pornographic material on Google Drive since 2020.

Contact Sofia Meyers at [email protected]. Follow her on X @SofiaMeyer84496