Warrant Issued for Eagan Man Charged with Possessing Child Pornography

A nationwide arrest warrant has been issued for an Eagan man accused of possessing almost 600 pornographic images of children as young as 5 on his computer.

Eric Andrew Hanson, 23, faces four counts of possession of pornography involving minors, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, a Minneapolis police officer working on an Internet Crimes Against Children task force last year found pornographic images of children being transmitted from an IP address in Eagan.

The two videos intercepted by the task force officers involved young boys, the complaint says.

Task force officers sent the case to the Eagan Police Department for further investigation, and Eagan police executed a search warrant at Hanson’s home on July 30, 2010.

Hanson’s parents told police that their son lived in the basement. Police seized several computers and hard drives from the home, including from Hanson’s bedroom.

While the search warrant was being executed, police interviewed Hanson at his job, and he admitted possessing child pornography videos, according to the complaint. He also told police that he had a laptop with him at work that also contained child pornography, the complaint says.

Hanson estimated that he had at least 50 videos and images of child pornography, and identified one of the videos involving an 8-year-old boy.

Police conducted a forensic examination of Hanson’s computers and hard drives and found 56 images of suspected child pornography, some of which showed sexual contact between children and adults.

Police found 589 images of child pornography on an external hard drive in Hanson’s bedroom, according to the complaint.

All the images found by police were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which determined that 134 of the image files and 17 video files had been identified as child victims.

Hanson’s whereabouts are unknown. Anyone with information is asked to contact local police.