A Fairfax County man has been indicted in federal court on seven counts related to the distribution and production of child pornography, according to court documents.
Faisal Hashime, of Springfield, was arrested in May and indicted last week after a yearlong investigation.
In 2011, an undercover federal agent contacted an Internet user through an image-hosting site where, according to an affidavit, the user had left his email address underneath a photo of a nude minor male.
The agent, posing as a man looking for child pornography, asked the user to send him photos of young boys, and the user sent him photos of a nude minor that he claimed was 13 years old, according to the affidavit.
The user also told the agent that he was looking for “anything boys under age 20 ages 0-20,” according to the affidavit.
Agents obtained the user’s IP address and Gmail account information and traced the user’s location to a home in Springfield. At the home, law enforcement officials arrested Hashime — who, according to an affidavit, was born in 1992. According to the affidavit, Hashime told law enforcement officials that he had used a social networking site to obtain child pornography. Law enforcement officials found hundreds of images of child pornography in a folder on his computer, according to an affidavit. According to that court document, Hashime also informed police that he had had sexual contact with five minors in the past three years — the most recent occurring in March 2012 with a 12-year-old boy.
Indictment papers were filed in federal court in Alexandria last week. Hashime was charged with three counts of production of visual depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct, two counts of distribution of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.
Members of Hashime’s family declined to comment on the charges when reached Tuesday.
