ROGERS, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — On January 25, the Rogers Police Department filed a request for an arrest warrant including child pornography charges for Noel Bonilla-Jimenez, 18.

A Rogers PD detective filed the eight page motion with details dating back over 18 months. The motion states that, on June 22, 2021, he received multiple Cyber Tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

The first Cyber Tip was submitted by Instagram on or about May 17, 2021. According to Instagram, a user uploaded a video file to an identified user with a hash value that had been previously viewed in other cases and categorized as Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The video involved a prepubescent female and an adult male.

Instagram identified the recepient of the video and also provided further information on the owner of the account, including a phone number, user ID and screen name.

Another report was submitted by Instagram the following day, when a user uploaded the same video file. Instagram again provided relevant information about both parties, including phone numbers and screen names of the uploader and recepient.

The next Cyber Tip was submitted by Snapchat, on or about May 15, 2021. According to Snapchat, a user uploaded a video with a hash value that corresponded with a video previously viewed in other cases and categorized as CSAM involving a prepubescent girl and an adult male.

Snapchat provided the user’s phone number, date of birth, email address and IP address.

In the court filing, the detective reported that he conducted a search of the phone number “and found that it possibly belonged to Noel Bonilla-Jimenez.” Police records showed that Bonilla-Jimenez had an address in Rogers and lived there.

On or about September 3, 2021, Instagram filed a report with NCMEC concerning a user that sent a video classified as a prepubescent minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. They reported the sender and recepient, as well as the hash value of the video.

The phone number and date of birth associated with the sender’s account matched Bonilla-Jimenez.

On or about December 10, 2021, the Rogers detective received a Cyber Tip with a report titled Priority Level 2, which “indicates possible risk to an individual in the near future or is otherwise time-sensitive.”

That report was called in on November 24, 2021, by someone who wished to remain anonymous. That person reported that a Snapchat user had sent multiple videos of a prepubescent girl engaging in illicit activity with another user. That suspected user was identified as Bonilla-Jimenez.

The detective stated that he called the reporting party on December 20, 2021, and was told that she had met Bonilla-Jimenez a few months ago, and that they exchanged Snapchat contact information. She said she observed his account and found “several videos of him having sex with believed to be adult females and videos of a prepubescent male” engaging in a sex act with an adult male.

She stated that she saved the videos to share with law enforcement, and the detective later received them. The caller reported that Bonilla-Jimenez posted a comment with a child’s age on one of the videos. The detective identified him as the adult male depicted in the videos.

Later that day, the detective went to Bonilla-Jimenez’s address and met a woman that confirmed he lived there. He showed her a clip from one of the reported videos and she was able to identify a child involved. She also identified Bonilla-Jimenez from a screen shot taken from one of the videos. The detective showed her another photo, with a background that matched the videos, and she confirmed that it was taken inside a bathroom at the residence.

Investigators left the area after learning that the suspect was not home. They later made contact with him and conducted an interview in which he admitted to being the owner of the accounts listed in all of the Cyber Tips, with the exception of one. He initially denied knowing the child shown in a screen shot.

He then replied “I’m going to be honest with you now since you basically know everything,” and admitted that he knew the child and that “they have already discussed and dealt with the incident.” He then said he was not comfortable discussing the incident and claimed that he had not seen the child in four or five years.

He stated that the incidents occurred two or three times, and that all of them happened at his residence. When informed that one of the videos appeared to take place inside a vehicle, Bonilla-Jimenez replied that they were in his vehicle, parked in the driveway of the residence.

The child was later interviewed at the Children’s Advocacy Center and he did not disclose any sexual abuse. When the interviewer asked him about seeing a video with him in it, the child began to cry and said that he wanted to leave the room.

They also interviewed the child’s mother, who identified her son in a screen capture and said that the picture appeared to have been taken approximately one year ago, when he would have been seven years old.

On December 21, 2021, the detective received a search warrant for Bonilla-Jimenez’s residence and executed it at approximately 4:20 p.m., with “several Detectives of the Rogers Police Department.” The suspect was home and was made to wait outside while the search was conducted.

Detectives located two iPhones, an iPad, a desktop computer, an 8GB flash drive and a 16GB flash drive. They received a warrant to search the seized devices on December 27, 2021.

The detective reported that he “conducted forensic extraction of both cell phones,” as well as the computer’s hard drive. During his investigation, he located one of the Snapchat videos, and also found that there were four copies of it in the “downloads” folder.

He also found a copy of the video on a seized iPhone 7, and noted that it was associated with a WhatsApp text conversation in which Bonilla-Jimenez sent the video with a message reading “7 year old boy.”

Based on the above, on January 25 the detective filed an affidavit of probable cause to obtain an arrest warrant on the following charges:

• Distributing, Possessing or Viewing of Matter Depicting Sexually Explicit Conduct Involving a Child, Class C Felony, two counts
• Computer Exploitation of a Child, Class Y Felony

The court issued and filed an arrest warrant the next day.