A Hemingford man is facing time in prison after being charged with three counts of possession of child pornography, each a class 2A felony, which carries a maximum of up to 20 years in prison for each charge if he is found guilty.
According to the Affidavit of Probable Cause for Arrest, David Munsey, 57, of Hemingford was taken into custody after the Attorney General’s Office tracked explicit materials back to his IP address.
The affidavit states that Edward Sexton, from the Office of the Attorney General, was monitoring file sharing networks, working to identify devices that belonged to people “in Nebraska offering to participate in the sharing of material believed to be child sexual abuse or exploitation.”
Sexton notes that in June 2020, a specific IP address was willing to share a file that Sexton had viewed in previous investigations, which was registered to the Hemingford Cooperative Telephone Co. in Hemingford. A subpoena was served on the company to obtain subscriber information, which revealed the account holder as Munsey.
On Aug. 4, a search warrant was issued by the Box Butte County Court, and investigators executed the warrant on Aug. 6 on Munsey’s residence. According to the affidavit, investigators located a locked safe in the bedroom, for which Munsey provided the passcode. Inside the safe, they “found a flash drive containing files depicting children in various state of undress as well as participating in sexually explicit conduct.”
Munsey was taken into custody, and charged with three counts of Possession of Visual Depiction of Sexually Explicit Conduct, each a class 2A felony. His bond was set at 10 percent of $50,000.
Munsey waived a preliminary hearing in Box Butte County Court on Sept. 8, and was bound over to Box Butte County District Court.