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TALLAHASSEE, FL – Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced that a Tampa man is in custody after he sent numerous images of child pornography to an undercover detective and then met to provide thousands of additional images. Nicholas Beeman was arrested by members of the Attorney General’s Tampa CyberCrime Task Force, working jointly with the Boynton Beach Police Department and the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office.

Beeman, 24, approached an undercover Boynton Beach Police detective online and began transmitting numerous images of child pornography to him, believing the detective was another man interested in viewing child pornography. Beeman asked the undercover detective to meet him in Tampa and said he would provide even more images of child pornography if the man would agree to meet in person.

The Boynton Beach Police Department officer contacted the Attorney General’s Tampa CyberCrime Task Force for assistance, and a meeting was arranged with an undercover CyberCrime investigator from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. Beeman met the undercover detective at a motel in Tampa and took him to Beeman's Tampa home, where Beeman gave the detective two external storage devices with numerous images of child pornography, including images of boys as young as five years old.

Beeman was arrested without incident and admitted to possessing thousands of images of child pornography. Law enforcement officers seized a computer and another external storage device, which will undergo additional forensic analysis. Other agencies assisting in this operation were the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Plant City Police Department. The case will be prosecuted by the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office. The CyberCrime Unit is also a member of the Central Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.