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Collingdale man faces kid-porn charges after AT&T worker alerts police

He might as well have just e-mailed the kiddie porn straight to police. Michael Natale, 43, of Collingdale, was charged Thursday with child pornography offenses after he went to an AT&T store at the Christiana Mall in Delaware and asked an employee to transfer his contacts and photos from his BlackBerry to the new iPhone he was purchasing.

Michael Natale, 34, was charged with seven counts of possession of child pornography and three counts of criminal use of a communication facility. An AT&T employee saw his photos.
Michael Natale, 34, was charged with seven counts of possession of child pornography and three counts of criminal use of a communication facility. An AT&T employee saw his photos.Read more
    by WILLIAM BENDER
    Published 

He might as well have just e-mailed the kiddie porn straight to police.

Michael Natale, 43, of Collingdale, was charged Thursday with child pornography offenses after he went to an AT&T store at the Christiana Mall in Delaware and asked an employee to transfer his contacts and photos from his BlackBerry to the new iPhone he was purchasing.

The employee, while transferring the data in a back room, noticed several photos on the BlackBerry that appeared to be child porn, including one of a young girl being raped, according to Delaware County authorities.

After snapping two photos of the images, the employee returned both phones to Natale, and turned the evidence over to police. The county's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force confirmed that one of the photos is part of a child-porn series identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Natale admitted that the phone photos were his, and a search of his laptop found at least one image of child porn, police said. He was charged with seven counts of possession of child pornography and three counts of criminal use of a communication facility.

Delaware County authorities have made several similar busts this summer, including that of a 70-year-old former Philadelphia police captain, a first-grade teacher who ran a summer camp and a repeat offender whose appeal of a prior conviction led to a Supreme Court decision that helped define state law.

"The District Attorney's Office is using current technology to investigate these types of crimes," said Assistant District Attorney Erica Parham. "As a result, we have been successful in bringing charges."