Justin Fussinger Sentenced to 10 Years For Multiple Child Porn Charges
A former elementary school teacher was sentenced to 10 years in prison for four counts of Possession or Viewing Matter Portraying a Sexual Performance by a Minor. Justin Fussinger, 36, of Covington, previously pled guilty to the charges before Kenton Circuit Judge Patricia Summe. Once released from prison, he will be required to register as a sexual offender for the rest of this life.
In April 2020, Covington Police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children indicating someone using the email address “barry.mekockner@yandex.com” was storing images and videos of child pornography in a Dropbox account. Records from Dropbox indicated the account was being accessed from an IP address registered to a home in Covington. Detective Austin Ross identified Fussinger as living at the address and obtained a search warrant for the home. Police seized numerous electronic devices. Forensic analysis of one laptop computer revealed images and videos depicting child pornography in unallocated memory space, meaning they had been deleted. The same computer indicated Fussinger was recently using an external hard drive with files labeled “coaching” and “private.” Detectives located the external drive and found additional child pornography hidden among other files containing videos of the youth football team Fussinger coached.
In an interview with Detective Ross, Fussinger admitted using the Dropbox account which caused the initial report to police. He also admitted to accessing Russian based websites in search of child pornography. Fussinger stated he would hack other user’s accounts in order to download the contraband images and videos. In total, police recovered five illicit videos from Fussinger’s computer and 37 images or videos from his Dropbox accounts.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Emily Arnzen, who prosecuted the case, said “Sexual exploitation of children is always alarming but when an elementary school teacher is collecting child pornography it’s terrifying because they have infinite access to actual children.” Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders applauded the work of Detective Ross and the Covington Police saying “There are alarmingly few police agencies with detectives trained to investigate online cases but Covington Police invested in protecting children and Detective Ross is one of the best at it!”
“Unfortunately, the only limitation on the number of child predator cases is the limited time and manpower devoted to patrolling online,” said Sanders. “Hopefully more agencies will follow Covington’s lead to combat this growing problem in our society,” he said.
Posted on Saturday, November 6th, 2021 @ 9:40PM
Categories: Blog, Commonwealth's Commentary, Media/Press Releases, Press Room
