200K Facebook Shares Force Suspect's Surrender

Ohio man said he couldn't take the pressure
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 15, 2014 10:20 PM CST
Updated Dec 16, 2014 12:05 AM CST
200K Shares Force Child Porn Suspect's Surrender
Jeremiah Malfroid's picture was shared on Facebook around 200,000 times.   (Immigration & Customs Enforcement)

After his picture was shared on Facebook almost 200,000 times, child porn suspect Jeremiah Malfroid "called his mother and said, 'I can’t take the pressure any more, I am going to turn myself in,'" authorities say. The 33-year-old, who was wanted in Ohio, surrendered to authorities in northern California yesterday, less than a week after information provided by federal investigators was featured in a post on the Facebook group "Locate the Missing," reports the Los Angeles Times.

Malfroid had been a fugitive since October, when he was charged with creating and distributing child pornography, the Columbus Dispatch reports. Investigators who seized a laptop earlier this year say Malfroid took more than 200 photos of a man abusing a girl around five years old, and his computer contained hundreds of other files showing other children being abused. The public pressure on him is "exactly the kind of thing we hope for when we do press releases and when we add people to our social-media network," an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman says. (More Facebook stories.)

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