Feds: Florida-based talent scout recruited victims for predatory kids fashion photographer
Federal agents say a New England-based fashion photographer took underage boys as young as 12 years old to several South Florida locations, including in the Keys, and used them to film child pornography.
Richard Emerich is in custody in Brattleboro, Vt., and has a detention hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. today in front of a federal judge there. If Judge John M. Conroy goes by prosecutors' recommendations, Emerich will be sent to Monroe County to face federal production and distribution of child pornography charges.
A cooperating confidential informant, charged by the state of Florida with "numerous counts of various child pornography-related crimes," asked Emerich in January to mail photographs of underage boys to Florida.
Emerich mailed an external hard drive and a thumb drive, "both containing numerous images of underage boys," according to court documents.
The package was intercepted by U.S. Postal Inspection Service agents. Inside the package were also business cards with the name and address of Emerich's company RWE Productions.
According to the federal complaint against Emerich, the confidential informant is a Florida-based talent scout and recruiter Emerich often worked with. Prosecutors say the informant "would book teenage boys to model for Emerich, who would fly to Florida from New England and take both non-nude and nude photographs of the young boys."
The first victim the court documents describe modeled for Emerich between 2007 and 2010 on shoots in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe counties. He was born in 1993, meaning he was 14 when he was photographed for pornography.
The victim told investigating agents he began modeling at the age of 10 and appeared in advertising for JC Penny, Polo and Tommy Hilfiger.
Some of the pornographic shoots he did with Emerich were in the Keys, according to the complaint.
In April, the informant contacted an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to report Emerich was traveling from Vermont to Florida to photograph boys between the ages of 12 and 16. It's not clear if those images were for legitimate jobs or for pornography, according to the complaint.
In June, Emerich mailed the government informant a package containing an external hard drive on which FDLE agents found "thousands of images of minor boys and age-indeterminate males."
Postal Inspection Service agents obtained a search for Emerich’s apartment on Oct. 29. According to the complaint, they found more than 50 external hard drives. So far, agents have only been able to forensically go through a small portion of the photographs, but "law enforcement has found numerous images that constitute child pornography."
This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 2:41 PM with the headline "Feds: Florida-based talent scout recruited victims for predatory kids fashion photographer."