UF student arrested on child pornography charges

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Nathan Christopher Lewis, 20, was arrested yesterday on 11 child pornography charges.

On May 31, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a CyberTip regarding child exploitation activity on a Snapchat account. The tip included one image classified as adult pornography and indicated that it was sent to a minor after the minor said she was 14 years old.

The registration and login IP addresses belonged to the University of Florida and a Comcast account in St. Augustine. During the investigation, a Gainesville Police Department Detective learned that this was the third CyberTip involving the email address associated with the Snapchat account.

A subpoena to Google produced “Nate Lewis” as the name associated with the email address, and the phone number associated with the account was reportedly associated with Nathan Christopher Lewis. A subpoena to Comcast led to an account owned by a relative of Lewis in St. Augustine. The University of Florida reported that IP addresses on its network “cannot be resolved to any specific network device or user.”

A subpoena to Snapchat produced a birthdate matching Lewis’s birthdate and his email address. Snapchat reportedly provided all the content from the suspect account, which included 66 “selfies” of the same person, sent from the Snapchat account to other accounts.

Snapchat also provided chats between the suspect account and other users. In five of the chats, the suspect account sent photos of himself to accounts that identified themselves as minors between the ages of 13 and 15. In two of the chats, accounts that identified themselves as minors sent pictures to the suspect account. In one chat, the suspect account wrote that he’d had sexual relations with an 11-year-old.

When accounts identified themselves as minors, the suspect account replied by saying he was “19 but u can be younger,” “19 but idc if ur younger,” or “19 but u can be younger idgaf.” In one of the chats, the suspect account provided a phone number associated with Lewis.

Snapchat also reported that seven Snapchat users had reported the suspect account to Snapchat for “inappropriate” chats.

The detective used a facial recognition tool to identify the person in the selfies as Lewis and found that the address on his driver’s license matched the St. Augustine address provided by Comcast.

The detective contacted the University of Florida Police Department and confirmed that Lewis is a current student at the university.

The detective also reported that she was contacted by a Broward County Sheriff’s Office Detective, who said she had contacted the victim listed in the CyberTip, had confirmed that she was 14 years old, and would be gathering a written statement from the victim.

Information received from Google in October added further evidence that the email account associated with the Snapchat account belonged to Lewis and was currently being used by him.

On November 7, a search warrant was executed at Lewis’s apartment in Royal Village and the detective spoke with Lewis and three other people. Lewis reportedly confirmed that he lived there and had lived at a dorm on campus during the previous academic year.

Post Miranda, Lewis reportedly said he no longer had Snapchat because it was a “huge distraction” but admitted owning the suspect account and engaging in the chats. He reportedly said he was depressed and lonely during the spring semester and “just wanted to talk to anyone and have an interaction” despite being part of a large friend group.

He reportedly said at first that he only chatted with 15- and 16-year-olds, but when told that there were chats with numerous accounts who identified as 13, 14, 15, and 16, he again said he’d gone through a “rough” time in the spring semester. He said he made up the claim that he’d had sex with an 11-year-old and said sometimes he bragged online about things that were not true.

When asked when he had last used Snapchat, he reportedly said he had tried to create a new account the previous weekend but couldn’t because he is banned from Snapchat, so he deleted the app off his phone.

Lewis has been charged with two counts of solicitation of child pornography, six counts of transmitting harmful material to minors, two counts of possession of child pornography, and one count of using a two-way communications device to facilitate a felony. Lewis has no previous convictions, and Judge Susan Miller-Jones set bail at $275,000.

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.