COOPER CITY, Fla. — Deputies arrested a Cooper City man on 11 felony charges on Tuesday after they said he was caught sharing child sexual abuse material through a chat app.
They said a search of messages sent by Jayden Efrain Palencia, 19, included additional “alarming discoveries.”
According to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the investigation into Palencia began in April after messaging app Kik alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that he had uploaded 50 illicit files to its app.
Those files “generally depicted” boys and girls as young as 4 being raped and sexually abused, deputies said.
According to BSO, a search warrant of the Kik account Palencia used also sent chats saying that the child victims depicted in the files were “lucky” and that his “favorites” were boys aged 3 to 7.
Authorities said they went to Palencia’s workplace on Tuesday, where they said he confessed to viewing and sharing the material for “several years” but said he recently deleted all of it from his cellphone.
They said that while they did not find any illicit content on his phone, they arrested him based on the Kik search warrant and his confession.
As of Wednesday, Palencia was being held in the BSO Main Jail on a $55,000 bond.
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