Police: Bill Gates’ Estate Staff Member Alleged to Trade Child Porn

Police: Bill Gates’ Estate Staff Member Alleged to Trade Child Porn

By Levi Pulkkinen | SeattlePI

Police: Bill Gates’ Estate Staff Member Alleged to Trade Child Porn
Home of Bill Gates on Lake Washington. Image credit: Jeff Wilcox, Flickr

A Seattle man employed as an engineer at Bill and Melinda Gates’ home is now accused of amassing a 6,000-image child pornography collection and trading child rape photos by Gmail.

King County prosecutors say Rick Allen Jones admitted he’d been collecting child rape videos and photos for a decade before police intervened in March. According to police, Jones, 51, was first contacted by police at the Microsoft founder’s estate while working for the billionaire couple.

Jones drew investigators’ attention in late 2013 after sharing a suspicious photo through Google’s email service. According to charging papers, the photo captured the sexual exploitation of two pre-teen boys.

Investigators tracked the image to Jones’ Ballard apartment, which they searched on March 20, a Seattle Police Department detective said in court papers. Jones was not there at the time, but investigators learned he was likely working at the Medina home.

Two detectives drove to the sprawling, lakefront estate and met Jones in the estate security office, according to charging papers. They then interviewed him in a parked SUV.

Having been read his rights, Jones claimed he shared child pornography online just once but then admitted he’d been collecting it for years, the Seattle detective said in charging papers.

“Jones said that he had been collecting (child pornography) for about 10 years now and has had an interest in young boys since he himself was a teenager,” the detective told the court.

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