Federal authorities arrested a Disney Cruise Line crew member for allegedly possessing child sexual abuse material, making it the third arrest this year of a crew member employed by the family-oriented cruise company over similar heinous charges.
Tirso Anthony Neri, a 44-year-old Philippino citizen working on the Disney Dream cruise ship, was arrested when federal agents found numerous explicit images and videos of underage persons and “young children” on his phone, according to a criminal complaint filed on Monday.
On Dec. 18, the Disney Dream cruise ship moored at the Fort Lauderdale-Port Everglades port in Florida after its trip to the Bahamas. Customs and Border Control (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigation agents stepped aboard to search Mr. Neri’s locked cabin.
Ship security requested Mr. Neri to report to his cabin, which he did.
Mr. Neri was in possession of two cellular phones, which were found to contain pornographic images and videos of “young children whose ages could not be definitely determined,” court documents said.
On one of the phones, investigators found that the cruise employee had a folder with the name of a girl, which contained several sexual photos and videos of the girl, who appeared to be a minor. One of the files was a photo of the girl’s passport from the Philippines that revealed her to be 17 at the time the video was filmed.
In an interview conducted at a CBP inspection area in Port Everglades, Mr. Neri said he regularly downloads adult content from several chat groups on Telegram and Facebook Messenger and buys links for files with such content. He claimed that he sometimes saves the folders he obtains without looking at them and then deletes them later.
Law enforcement detained the phones for a full forensic examination, and Mr. Neri was released at the time.
Further examination of the phones revealed “numerous sexually explicit photographs and videos of young children whose ages could not be definitely determined.”
The affidavit listed descriptions of some of the materials containing sexual acts involving children appearing to be 14, or 12, or 10 years old—with the youngest presumed to be 9.
Mr. Neri has been arrested and is being held in the Broward Main Jail in Fort Lauderdale. He has been charged with possession of child pornography and transportation of child pornography.
“In accordance with our zero-tolerance policy for this kind of alleged behavior, this individual is no longer with the company,” a Disney spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.
Mr. Neri is the third Disney Cruise Line employee arrested this year over child pornography.
The other two, Alvin Gonzales, 49, and Amiel Trazo, 28, were also from the Philippines. They were each arrested and charged with felony possession of child pornography in January, Local 10 News reported.