A Banks County man who identified himself as a retired Methodist minister is one of three Northeast Georgia men recently charged in a crackdown on child cybersex crimes.
The GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit (CEACC) charged David Ball, 70, with four counts of sexual exploitation of children for allegedly possessing child pornography.
CEACC launched its investigation into Ball’s internet activity after receiving information from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Agents executed a search warrant at his residence in Banks County and subsequently arrested him on Oct. 28.
During an interview with law enforcement, Ball claimed to be a retired pastor who had previously worked at Methodist churches throughout the world, the GBI says.
Ball was arrested the same day the GBI picked up two other area men for similar offenses.
Hart County resident, Uriah Carter Cummings, 33, was charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of children for allegedly distributing child pornography. Franklin County resident Matthew Daniel Seay, age 36, was taken into custody on arrest warrants out of Virginia for allegedly sexually exploiting multiple juveniles from other states online. The alleged victims in those cases were under the age of 15.
All three men were booked into their county jails. Seay was to be extradited to Virginia.
Continued crackdown
All three investigations are part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s CEACC Unit, to identify those involved in the child pornography trade.
The ICAC Program, created by the U.S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.
Anyone with information about these or other child exploitation cases is asked to contact the GBI’s CEACC Unit at 404-270-8870.
