New Homeland Security cybercrimes lab helps in child porn bust in San Francisco's Excelsior District

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Homeland Security Investigations newly established Cybercrimes lab found roughly 200,000 child porn images in Joey Hernandez's possession.

About 60-percent of the lab's focus is on child exploitation cases. It's the only one of its kind in Northern California and it helped bust Hernandez.

It all started when Canadian authorities noticed a lot of child porn activity on an IP address. They contacted Homeland Security Investigations in California. The lab was then able to find the owner of that IP address in an apartment on Alemany.

Deputy Special Agent in Charge, Terry Templet, said, "Upon making entry to his residence we found Mr. Hernandez in bed with an under aged female."

Christina Barfuss is the Supervisor for child exploitation and forensics. She said, "Hernandez was a habitual predator and filming some of his exploits we were able to identify some of the areas that he had done that."

They compared back ground images and used facial recognition data to find victims and matched a lot to a neighborhood in the Excelsior.

Those who live next door are shocked.

Neighbors Martha Sanchez and Joe said, "we would see him every now and then but we didn't know him or anything didn't seem any different than anyone else. We got a granddaughter here, I work for the school district, and any of that stuff gives me the shivers."

If you would like to report a cybercrime you can do so by going here.