An indictment filed in U.S. District Court Monday revealed federal authorities have arrested a Disney Cruise Line worker on two federal charges after he was allegedly caught in possession of child sexual abuse material on board the kid-filled ship.
Tirso Anthony Neri, 44, was identified in court documents as a crew member on the Disney Dream, based out of Port Everglades.
A criminal complaint by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Eric Stowers states the investigation into Neri began on December 18, after the Disney Dream arrived at Port Everglades from the Bahamas.
Court documents disclose that HSI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents retrieved two of Neri's smartphones in a border search of his cabin.
Authorities allegedly discovered "numerous sexually explicit photographs and videos of young children whose ages could not be definitively determined."
Neri claimed in an interview that he is in several Telegram and Facebook Messenger chat groups where he downloads and buys adult pornography, according to Local10 News.
Neri told authorities he sometimes "obtains folders in the chat groups and saves them to his phone without looking at them and then deletes them after," when asked about a specific folder with the content of a 17-year-old girl.
He doubled down on the folder, saying he must have "saved it to his phone without looking at it and had not deleted the folder."
However, Stowers wrote in the complaint that during a more intensive examination, they located more child sexual abuse videos, including those depicting multiple girls, as young as 9, as well as a video of a boy, aged somewhere between 10 and 12.
Neri is facing counts of possession of child pornography and transportation of child pornography, and is the third employee of the magical cruise line to be arrested on federal child sexual abuse material charges in South Florida this year.
Alvin Gonzales, 49, and Amiel Trazo, 28, Phillippine nationals like Neri, have been indicted in U.S. District Court.
He is currently being held in the Broward Main Jail.
