Woodbury man held on $250,000 bail on child porn felony charges

A 44-year-old Woodbury man faces 12 felonies after child pornography was found on his computer during an undercover investigation. 

Brian Wayne Swingle, who lives in the 3200 block of Oakview Drive, has been charged in Washington County District Court with six counts of dissemination of pornographic work and six counts of possession of pornographic work.

While he awaits his August omnibus hearing, Swingle is being held on $500,000 bail without conditions or $250,000 with the condition that he have no contact with minors younger than age 18.

According to the complaint:

A member of the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force contacted Woodbury Public Safety about a Minneapolis police officer’s investigation of Swingle. 

Using Undercover Investigative Software (UIS), the officer connected directly to one IP address participating in peer-to-peer sharing to download files of child porn from the suspect.

Between Oct. 13, 2014, and Feb. 24, 2015, the officer downloaded 58 child porn files from the IP address registered to Swingle. Among the files were videos depicting three young girls (ages 4-6) in a bathtub, a 12-year-old girl in the back seat of a car, and an 8-year-old girl in a bathtub; all were portrayed being forced into sex acts or graphic exposure. At least one was a victim known to police, as documented by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) child victim identification program.

A Woodbury police officer executed a search warrant April 29, finding more than 1,800 child exploitation movies or images on a laptop with an active user profile called Brian.

At the time the computer was seized, 10 movie files containing child exploitation terms were downloading. 

Among various settings that were changed on the downloading software, the “allow freeloaders” setting was change from “always” to “rarely,” stopping other users from uploading Swingle’s files unless they are willing to share files with him.

Six hundred child exploitation movie files had been placed into folders set to “share.” They could be downloaded by other software users.