On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, and Wednesday, December 8, 2021, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes (CEACC) Unit, with the assistance of the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, executed four residential search warrants related to separate investigations pertaining to the Sexual Exploitation of Children.
The investigations began after the GBI CEACC Unit received numerous independent and unrelated cybertips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Those cybertips involved the possession and/or distribution of explicit child sexual abuse material, commonly referred to as child pornography, which resolved to Columbus, Muscogee County, GA.
As a result of the search warrant executions, the following individuals were arrested:
- Andrew Paulino, age 33, of Columbus, Georgia was charged with Sexual Exploitation of Children (Possession of Child Pornography), Sexual Exploitation of Children (Distribution of Child Pornography), Sexual Exploitation of Children (Production of Child Pornography), and Child Molestation.
- Christopher Tarnowski, age 35, of Columbus, Georgia was charged with four counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children (Possession of Child Pornography).
- Elijah Gallion, age 23, of Columbus, Georgia was charged with two counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children (Possession of Child Pornography) and two counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children (Distribution of Child Pornography).
The arrestees were transported to the Muscogee County Jail.
This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes 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.
