DEL RIO, Texas (Border Report) – Federal officials have charged a South Texas man with multiple counts of child porn involving downloaded images shared over the internet and photographs of two girls allegedly taken in homes in Montana and Minnesota.

A criminal complaint filed Aug. 31 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas charges John David Nishwitz with one count each of possession, distribution and transportation of child pornography and an additional count of obscene visual representations of sexual abuse of children.

Nishwitz faces an additional state charge of sexual assault of a child in Montana.

Law enforcement officials began looking into suspicious internet activity at Nishwitz’s home in Victoria, Texas, after receiving tips from the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

According to federal court records, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent working the case allegedly received 12 folders with videos and photographs depicting the sexual exploitation of children. They allegedly came via BitTorrent – a private file-sharing network – from an electronic device in the home. The images allegedly included depictions of pre-teen children engaged in sexual acts with adults and with other children.

Officers with the Victoria Police Department, the Victoria County Sheriff’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations raided the home on July 7 and found a REVVL 6 cellphone in Nishwitz’s bedroom whose internet protocol (IP) address matched data provided by NCMEC, court records show.

The cellphone home and a memory card inserted in the device held 67.9 megabytes of child porn images and 38.9 gigabytes of videos depicting sexual abuse of children, court records show. HSI alleges the agents and officers found another two memory cards also containing child porn.

The phone also contained images of the suspect allegedly sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl, who was the child of a roommate with whom he previously lived in Montana, court records show.

In an interview with police, Nishwitz allegedly said he took the videos of the 4-year-old girl in Montana and also nude photographs of his own preschool-aged daughter in Minnesota. The latter images also were found in the devices seized at the home in Victoria, court records show.

The obscenity charge refers to child “erotica” image files found on the devices. Those include cartoons depicting underage characters engaging in sexual acts, and “real” children in lingerie and bathing suits photographed in sexually suggestive poses exposing their clothed private parts, according to court records.

The federal case against Nishwitz was filed before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jason B. Libby in Corpus Christi, Texas. The Montana Department of Justice and an FBI task force in that state are investigating the sexual assault of a child case.