How investigators caught a man accused of possessing child pornography in Ponte Vedra

Local law enforcement has partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after CyberTipline was reported looking for child pornography.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida. A local golf equipment specialist working with children is behind bars for possessing images of child sexual exploitation.

Joshua Gamlia works at the PGA Tour Performance Center at TPC Sawgrass and is facing 4 criminal charges for possession of child sex material.

The coordinated efforts of several companies, as well as state and national agencies, resulted in the arrest of Gumlia within 2 months. What started as an Internet search in April led to an arrest in July.

According to the arrest report, on April 28, Yahoo! sent a message to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after investigators said Gumlia uploaded 12 child porn images using his Yahoo! E-mail address.

A month later, on May 30, Verizon confirmed to investigators that the mobile phone associated with the email account belonged to Gamlia.

According to his Twitter and LinkedIn pages, Gamlia works as a locksmith for the club and works with young golfers at the PGA Tour Performance Center at TPC Sawgrass. On June 28, representatives from the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office interviewed Gamlia at TPC Sawgrass. According to the police report, Gumila said he was disgusted with himself but considered the images “a victimless crime”.

John Shenan, vice president of Children at Risk at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said his organization’s CyperTipline views between 500,000 and 1 million images each week.

“It’s looking for a needle in a haystack,” Shenan said. “Time is of the essence when children are constantly being abused.”

To sift through this large amount of content, the group is partnering with a company called Videntifier, which has software that can identify possibly duplicate content, to immediately identify new material in hopes of helping law enforcement find exploited children.

“With our technology, you can find content in this database in less than 1 second,” said Sigurdur Rahnarsson, CEO of Videntifier Technologies, “and you only need a few video frames to identify content, sometimes even one frame, and you can identify content.”

According to the police, Gumlia cooperated with the investigation and turned in his phone and tablet. The police report said the digital download showed 16 different searches for child sexual material in the 10 days before his devices were handed over to law enforcement.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that larger companies such as Yahoo! and Verizon tend to use their CyberTipline, but they said the general public can also submit a review if they see an image or video of an exploited child.

If you suspect a child is being exploited online, report it to CyberTipline.

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