State College man bound over on child porn charges

A State College man was bound over for trial Wednesday on 836 felony counts of possessing child pornography following a preliminary hearing at the Centre County courthouse.

Adam Zydney, 26, was charged after an undercover investigation revealed shared images on BitTorrent, an online file sharing software, leading to a search of his residence in July.

According to testimony by Ferguson Township Detective Joshua Martin, a MacBook computer was seized in the search. Using passcodes provided by Zydney, investigators discovered hundreds of images as well as more than 80 videos.

Martin said he was contacted regarding Zydney in July by a York police officer. The officer reported being part of a peer-to-peer network investigation and had downloaded illegal images using an IP address assigned to a GetWireless.net subscriber. In the course of the search, police seized all electronics in the home, including the laptop.

Zydney then came to the police station in Ferguson Township, he said, and provided the passcodes. One code was needed to access the computer, while a second code was needed to access the folders containing the pictures and videos.

Martin said that he categorized the images found on Zydney’s computer. There were 19 videos that depicted children engaged in sexual acts with adults, 63 videos with nude or partially nude children in provocative sexual poses, 175 images of children engaged in sexual contact with adults or other children and 579 images of children with exposed genitalia posed in sexually provocative positions.

Using a law enforcement database, many of the images and videos were verified as depicting underage children by comparing them withexploited children in the database.

Martin also said there were additional images that did not generate charges, including pictures and videos of actual children that did not contain nudity.

Zydney was bound over for trial by District Judge Carmine Prestia, who presided over the hearing.

Following Prestia’s ruling, District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller argued that bail set by District Judge Steven Lachman at arraignment was inadequate given the charges, requesting that bail be raised to $200,000 and that Zydney be jailed for safety reasons. The defense argued that he should not be punished for asking for a preliminary trial, saying Zydney is in therapy and not a danger.

Prestia decided to keep bail as it is — $25,000 unsecured — but restricted Zydney from any online access except for work-related emails.

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 3:35 PM with the headline "State College man bound over on child porn charges."