Sanford child porn investigation started with tip from National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Images depicting nude girls detected in AOL account

A child pornography investigation into billionaire banker T. Denny Sanford was prompted by a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an affidavit released on Thursday said.

That tip was sent on Aug. 14, 2019 to the South Dakota Internet Crimes Against Children and was forwarded to Jeff Kollars, an agent with the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. The tip indicated that an AOL user received image files suspected of depicting “child pornography and child erotica,” according to the affidavit Kollars prepared in order to get a search warrant.

In all, 36 image files were contained in the AOL user account belonging to Denny Sanford — most of them duplicates. The images were detected by Oath, the entity formed with the merger of AOL and Yahoo.com, and reported to NCME.

The law enforcement affidavits that prompted the investigation into Sanford were released Thursday following more than two years of litigation.