UK – Former BBC executive downloaded a haul of online child porn so massive it crashed his work’s entire internet connection

THE DAILY MAIL — A former BBC executive has admitted downloading more than 150 indecent images of children in folders named ‘teens’ and ‘candids’ onto a hard drive.

Mark Deitch, 57, of Willden, Bedfordshire, would spend hours of time at work at a talent agency scouring anonymous online forum 4chan for things to download as he procrastinated – and it was enough to crash the internet connection.

He admitted downloading the child images but said they were part of a wider haul from 4chan, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard today.

The ‘prolific downloader’ claims to have been unaware of a folder named ‘pizza’ which contained only indecent images of children.

He was set to face trial but has now pleaded guilty to two charges of making indecent images of children. Deitch has been undergoing a Newton hearing with a judge to determine if he was aware of the indecent images and whether or not he had intentionally downloaded them.

At the time of the offences Deitch, who worked for the BBC for 12 years and was responsible for purchasing programmes on behalf of other broadcasters, was working for talent agency Benjamin Management. He used a work computer to download the images before transferring them to an external hard drive.

His computer only came under scrutiny after technicians tried to fix it. Prosecutor Adrian Fleming said the original computer had been wiped so that it could be used by someone else.

This meant investigators could only examine the hard drive and that certain factors – such as a browser search history – were unavailable. They did find a folder called ‘MDX’ which Deitch admitted he may have created because it was his initials and an ‘X’ which could stand for X-rated content.

Mr Fleming said: ‘Within that we [found] a number of sub files including one entitled “pizza”. CONTINUE READING