Hyde Park man arrested after data storage firm reports finding child porn on his devices

A Hyde Park man faces multiple felony charges after a state police investigator said child pornography was found on his electronic devices.

Joshua Glen Townsend, 33, of the 300 block of First Avenue was arrested on two child pornography charges and three counts of criminal use of a communications facility. He was being held in the Westmoreland County jail in lieu of a $100,000 cash bond, according to court records.

Townsend faces a preliminary hearing before District Judge Cheryl Peck Yakopec on Oct. 25.

A trooper wrote in the criminal complaint charging Townsend that state police received a notification from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a cloud storage provider called Synchronoss Technologies reported that 30 files containing child pornography were uploaded to a Verizon cloud account that police later learned belonged to Townsend.

Synchronoss was able to provide investigators with copies of the files for their investigation, police said.

On Aug. 18, the state Attorney General’s Office obtained an administrative subpoena to learn the subscriber information for the cloud account, which led them to Townsend, police said.

While executing a search warrant at Townsend’s house, police say, he admitted that the telephone number used to download the child porn belonged to him and that the images and videos were on multiple devices.

Police said files on Townsend’s devices contained multiple still images and video clips of child pornography.