Oakdale man pleads guilty to possessing child porn

A 24-year-old Oakdale man on Monday pleaded guilty to possessing hundreds of child pornography images and faces up to 20 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento.

Timothy Brian Werlhof is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 5. Along with the prison sentence, the judge could order Werlhof to pay a $250,000 fine.

In late July, a federal grand jury indicted Werlhof on a charge of receiving and distributing material involving the sexual exploitation of prepubescent minors. To avoid a trial, the defendant agreed to plead guilty to possessing material involving the sexual exploitation of prepubescent minors.

Federal prosecutors said Werlhof knowingly possessed pictures of children under the age of 12 involved in sexually explicit conduct. They said the defendant had more than 600 explicit images, some of which were of vulnerable victims and sadomasochistic conduct.

In addition to possessing the images, Werlhof made them available to others over the Internet.

Initially, investigators had said they found more than 2,500 child porn images and more than 150 videos on the defendant’s smartphone. That included a photo of a nude 5-year-old girl the defendant knew.

A filed FBI affidavit indicated that Werlhof photographed the nude girl without her knowledge and downloaded the rest of the child porn images and videos from the Internet. The defendant told investigators he posted on the Internet some of the images, including the girl’s photo, according to the affidavit.

Werlhof has been in custody since May 22. The child pornography investigation started May 8, when an Oakdale resident found a secure digital memory card, which is used to store files on tablets, smartphones and other computer devices.

The resident told police he found the card near a 7-Eleven convenience store in the 1200 block of West F Street in Oakdale. He told police he viewed the contents of the card to determine its owner and found the child porn images, according to the affidavit written by Special Agent Greg Wenning of the FBI.

The storage card was then handed over to Oakdale police. Detective Bill Carter sent the card to Ceres police Detective Britton Moore, who is assigned to the High Tech Crimes Task Force. The card was forensically analyzed.

Along with the child porn, the FBI agent wrote that investigators found photos of the defendant, including a self-portrait, which was used to identify Werlhof as a suspect.

Werlhof was questioned by police. He told investigators the memory card belonged to him and he downloaded child pornographic images from the Internet and photographed a nude girl before uploading those photos to the Internet, according to the FBI agent.

The defendant identified the 5-year-old girl, who did not know at the time she was being photographed. He was alone with the girl in October 2013.

Werlhof told investigators the girl was running around naked and he told the girl to put on some clothes, knowing that he would be sexually aroused, Wenning wrote in the affidavit. The FBI agent said that Werlhof photographed the girl as she was putting on a shirt with the intent of using the image for his arousal.

This story was originally published October 27, 2014 at 6:45 PM with the headline "Oakdale man pleads guilty to possessing child porn."