Ballinger Man Indicted for Possession of Obscene Images of Children

SAN ANGELO— A Ballinger man has been indicted for possessing obscene images of children on his cellphone.

Zachary Smith Potter, 26, has been indicted by a Tom Green County grand jury for possession of child pornography.

According to court documents, on August 19, 2022, the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children showing that an unknown person using a Yahoo email had uploaded 86 images containing suspected child pornography. Information provided was a date of birth and a phone number that were attached to a Google account.

Both Google and Yahoo received grand jury subpoenas where both provided information that the Google account was registered to Zach Potter. Several debit and credit card were also attached to the account with the same name. A grand jury subpoena was submitted to Verizon who then provided information that a Samsung Galaxy A03x TracFone was associated with the phone number provided to law enforcement.

An investigator was able to identify Potter and a search warrant was executed where two cellphones were seized, a Samsung Galaxy TracFone and a Motorola.

Investigators conducted an interview with Potter while the search warrant was being executed. Potter allegedly told investigators that he did view and download images containing suspected child pornography to the two cellphones that were seized. Potter also allegedly said that the Yahoo email account was his and that there were probably “100” lewd images of children on both of the phones.

Potter then allegedly told investigators that the age range of the pornography he looked at and downloaded ranged from 10-years-old to 40-years-old and that he used several websites to download the images off the internet.

The images that were allegedly uploaded to Google by Potter contained either a child or children, ages 10-12, with private areas exposed to the camera and had words like “Only 1.00” and “EXTREMELY YOUNGEST GIRLS” on them.

Potter was arrested February 8, 2023, for possession of child pornography and was released on February 10, 2023, on $50,000 bond. He is due in court on June 7, 2023, for post-indictment reporting.