Gainesville man arrested for possession of child pornography

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Adrian Alan Jones, 36, was arrested yesterday and charged with eight counts of possession of child pornography.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip on October 18, 2022, regarding child exploitation images on Synchronoss, Verizon’s cloud storage system; that tip was sent to the Gainesville Police Department. A second tip was received on July 26, 2021, about child sexual abuse material on the same Synchronoss account; that tip was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations.

Subpoenas to Verizon Wireless and Google (for the email address associated with the Verizon account) led investigators to Jones, who lives in Gainesville. Gainesville Police Department executed a search warrant at his apartment yesterday morning and made contact with Jones and his minor children.

Post Miranda, Jones reportedly said he moved to Gainesville from Minnesota and has lived here for six or seven years. He reportedly said the phone number and email account linked to the Verizon cloud storage account are his, but he said he hasn’t used that email in a long time. He said he doesn’t normally download pornography to his phone and said he didn’t know how the child exploitation images ended up on the Verizon account. He reportedly said he searches for “teen porn” when looking for pornography, but he’s actually looking for “college-age” individuals.

Jones reportedly said he didn’t recognize the child exploitation images, but he said he drinks heavily and is not sure what he might have looked for or saved to his phone while intoxicated.

Officers reported that “numerous” child sexual abuse images were found in a search of his phone at the scene; he has currently been charged with possession of eight photos and videos.

Jones has no local criminal history; bail information is unavailable.

Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.