Friday, September 19, 2008

A 44-year-old Key West man was charged Wednesday with possessing 38 videotaped clips of child pornography, some of which contained sexual images of infants, investigators said Thursday.

Michael Tharp, a Southern Cross Hotel resident who worked at Rick's Bar before being terminated Thursday, was arrested on Telegraph Lane at 9 p.m.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and Monroe County State Attorney's Office charged him with 38 counts of possession of photographs/sexual performance by a child. Each count is a third-degree felony that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $5,000 for each image, according to state attorney spokesman Matthew Helmerich.

The FDLE last year began an investigation that focused on file-sharing or so-called peer-to-peer Internet programs that can be used to download and transmit illegal images such as child pornography, Helmerich said. Investigators linked one such Internet address to a Key West computer from which child pornography allegedly was being sent, Helmerich said.

Agents obtained a search warrant and on May 21 seized a computer allegedly owned by Tharp. Investigators claim they found 38 clips, some as short as five seconds and others as long as 36 minutes, depicting children engaged in sexual acts, Helmerich said.

Investigators contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to compare images in its database of known and identified child victims. They were able to identify children, from infants to under 16 years old, in all 38 clips, Helmerich said.

"In other words, all the children are known child victims -- victims identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children," Helmerich said.

Mark Rossi, owner of Rick's Bar, said he fired Tharp on Thursday.

Tharp was booked into Monroe County jail on $50,000 bond.

alinhardt@keysnews.com