According to the FBI, a former investigative news producer at KNBC in Los Angeles has been arrested on suspicion of distributing more than 100 child pornographic images and videos.
Phil Drechsler, 60, accessed and shared child pornography in a group chat with more than 20 others on the secure messaging app Telegram, an FBI agent wrote in the criminal complaint. to the former LA news producer.
“Drechsler, using the alias ‘Karen Flores’, is a member of an online community of individuals who regularly send and receive child pornography through a group chat in the Telegram app called ‘ The Playground Lives’,” Agent Chelsea Malone wrote in the complaint, filed April 18.
Drechsler allegedly in a group chat viewed and shared child pornography in less than a year between August 2020 and June 2021, according to Malone. When federal agents executed a search warrant on his phone last month, they also found suspected child pornography in his recently deleted album in the Photos app.
The 60-year-old was laid off by KNBC in February after being offered to buy the company, he tweeted at the time.
“I was offered a buyout… turned it down… fired with all terms of the acquisition,” he tweeted.
While Drechsler tweeted, “I love what I do. I still feel young,” at the time of his dismissal, when agents questioned his wife on April 17, she told them her husband had made “statements regarding suicide.” my life” and then drove to Ohio with three guns, according to the complaint.
Federal agents in Ohio began monitoring Drechsler at a hotel in Cincinnati and arrested him there on April 17.
He was charged with three counts of distributing child pornography.
