LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A North Las Vegas man faces several charges after he brought his laptop to a service company and an employee saw images of child pornography on it, police documents said.
On Dec. 26, 2022, Harvey Elman brought his laptop to an unnamed company to check for issues regarding his email not working properly, police said. According to a report, an employee recognized Elman from a previous customer service encounter.
Elman asked the employee to help him with email issues on his laptop. When the two sat down, Elman opened his laptop to the mail application, where an email was already opened, showing an image of an underage girl, the report stated.
According to the report, the employee excused himself and reported what he saw to his manager, and the two called the police. When the employee returned to Elman, a different image showing the underage girl was pulled up, the report stated.
When police arrived, they saw that there were several different emails on the laptop sent from the same email with similar content. Police spoke with Elman, who admitted to downloading the pictures from the internet for free, the report stated.
According to the report, when asked why he downloaded the pictures, Elman told police that he enjoyed looking at them. Elman had pictures showing both real and animated children.
Police asked Elman if he had ever tried to meet with a child. The report stated that he denied it, and said it would be “immoral.”
The LVMPD took the laptop as evidence and in January, a warrant to search it was authorized. In February, it was reported that web searches and bookmarks on the laptop were indicative of child sexual abuse material.
According to the report, the search found 245 images of child sexual abuse material, child exploitation/age difficult, and animation-child exploitative. Additionally, there was one video of child sexual abuse.
Two additional search warrants were used to search both of Elman’s email addresses. According to the report, Elman sent an email with child sexual abuse material in December.
Police arrested Elman on Aug. 3. While Elman’s exact age was not listed, he was born in 1948, making him either 74 or 75.
According to the report, Elman told police that he had brought his laptop to the company to figure out some issues. Elman admitted that an employee accidentally saw some “private and no appropriate photos they were not supposed to” and called the police.
He also admitted to viewing child pornography on his home desktop. The report stated that police are obtaining a search warrant for Elman’s home and other electronics.
Elman faces three counts of possession of visual presentation depicting sexual conduct of a person under 16 years of age and one count of preparing, advertising, or distributing materials depicting pornography involving a minor. His next court appearance was scheduled for Aug. 9 at 8:30 a.m.
The report stated that more charges may be filed pending the results of the search warrant of Elman’s home and electronics.
