A Homeland Security agent has signed a plea deal in which he admits he received and accessed thousands of images of child pornography.
Richard Nikolai Gratkowski, 40, who has been with Homeland Security Investigations since 2008, took a plea offer instead of going to trial.
A guilty plea means he faces five to 20 years on the charge of receiving the images and up to 20 years on a count of accessing child porn with intent to view it. He is expected to formalize the deal at a plea hearing expected to be scheduled within a week in federal court in San Antonio.
According to court testimony, Gratkowski most recently worked on gang investigations in San Antonio for HSI, a section of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also had worked in Eagle Pass.
An FBI agent previously testified that Gratkowski’s employer put him on paid leave and was working to fire him.
“All Department of Homeland Security employees are held to the highest standards of behavior and ethics,” ICE said in a statement issued after Gratkowski was arrested in January. “While ICE does not comment on personnel matters, the agency is fully cooperating with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) regarding this issue.”
Gratkowski was arrested Jan. 4 after his case was referred to the FBI by his own agency’s internal affairs branch and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigators, FBI special agent Larry Baker testified at a hearing in February.
Baker testified that the Homeland Security agent’s arrest arose out of an investigation into a child porn website on The Onion Router, or TOR network, which seeks to keep users anonymous by using thousands of relays or servers, much like the layers of an onion. The same investigation also ensnared then-Border Patrol agent Paul Casey Whipple, 35, of Hondo in mid-December.
According to Baker, the website in question provided access to more than 117,000 graphic child porn videos. Gratkowski and Whipple were both identified as users.
In Gratkowski’s case, he used his USAA bank account — and his government ID — to buy bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, and open an account on the child porn website in April 2016, Baker said. Gratkowski then established a second account that gave him access to the site through much of 2017.
Baker said Gratkowski also visited two other child porn websites on the TOR network and used a social media app called Kik to get to another child porn site.
Read the rest at San Antonio Express-News
One Response
You would think he would know better…