The San Antonio Police Department arrested 71-year-old Robert Batze Tuesday on child pornography charges after police found 2,200 images on his computer.
Police were led to the suspect after he took his computer to the Best Buy at the Rim for repairs in October. He asked technicians to install a new hard drive. He also brought an external hard drive and asked techs to transfer that data onto his new hard drive.
After completing the work, the technician checked to make sure the transfer was successful and discovered what he believed was child pornography.
Members of the store's Geek Squad saw the images and contacted authorities. According to the affidavit, the technician told authorities THAT he saw images depicting children as young as 13 years old engaging in sexual conduct with adult men.
When Batze came to pick up his computer, police were waiting. They didn't arrest him then but they did take his computer and took it to their property room as evidence. They later got a search warrant and found thousands of images on Batze's computer.
"It's our understanding that when the technician stumbled upon these suspected images, he did believe that they did depict a child. In this situation, unfortunately and thankfully, the employee did the right thing and did contact authorities," said Jennifer Rodriguez with SAPD.
In a statement Best Buy said:
When Geek Squad employees inadvertently discover what may be child pornography in the normal course of repairing a computer, they are required to notify their supervisors, who may in turn contact local law enforcement. Our customers are informed of this policy prior to doing any work.
SAPD says that under Texas law, computer technicians who encounter child porn are legally obligated to report their discovery to authorities or they could face charges themselves.