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An employee of Disney Cruise Line was taken into custody on Monday on charges related to child pornography. This incident marks the third crew member of the family-friendly cruise company accused of such a despicable crime this year.
Tirso Neri, a 44-year-old crew member working on the Disney Dream ship, was apprehended by authorities from US Border Control and Homeland Security. They found sexually explicit material involving young girls, some as young as 9 years old, on his mobile phone as stated in the criminal complaint.
Originating from the Philippines, Neri faces allegations of trafficking and possessing child pornography following a search conducted in December on his two mobile devices.
The federal agents boarded the Disney Dream ship when it arrived at the Fort Lauderdale-Port Everglades port in Florida from the Bahamas and conducted a search of the worker’s cabin, according to the complaint filed in the US Southern District of Florida.
The officers confiscated two phones that Neri had on him and discovered “numerous sexually explicit photographs and videos of young children whose ages could not be definitely determined.”
Later digging revealed that the cruise employee had a folder with the name of an apparent minor victim which contained several sexual and nude photos and videos of the minor along with a photo of her Philippines passport that revealed her date of birth.
The passport confirmed that she was 17 at the time the footage was taken, the complaint states.
Neri said that he downloads adult pornography and buys links containing the explicit content from different group chats on Telegram and Facebook Messenger in an interview with officers at Port Everglades.
He claimed that he received the folder with the images and videos of the 17-year-old girl from one of the group chats and saved it to his phone without looking at what was inside, according to the court document.
A forensic review of his phone later showed that the images were not only saved but viewed by the phone’s user.
Other videos later discovered on Neri’s phone allegedly show a boy, between 10 and 12, engaging in sex with a girl between 12 to 14 and a young girl naked with an adult man with the text “9 years old delicious” in Filipino written across the screen, the complaint states.
Neri is being held at Broward Main Jail.
Two other Disney Cruise Line employees — Alvin Gonzales, 49, and Amiel Trazo, 28 — were each arrested and charged with felony possession of child pornography in January. Both men are also from the Philippines and worked aboard the Disney Dream, Local 10 News reported.
Disney Cruise Line did not immediately return a request for comment.
But a spokesperson for the company told the local Florida outlet that Neri is no longer an employee.
“In accordance with our zero-tolerance policy for this kind of alleged behavior, this individual is no longer with the company,” the spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.
