Venice man faces 50 charges after child porn found via Snapchat, Sarasota sheriff says

A Venice man has been arrested and charged with 50 counts of possession of child pornography, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

Bengt Francke, 31, was arrested after detectives received a tip in September from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

Four videos and two images depicting child porn were uploaded to the social media app Snapchat, the investigating deputy’s report said, and most of them showed girls forced to have sex with adult men.

Snapchat reported it to NCMEC and provided the IP address of the device used, which was used to find Francke’s home address.

A deputy went to the home Monday, the report said, and after initially denying seeing the images he allowed deputies to “triage” his computer and cellphone and provided the computer password.

Deputies found 17 sexually explicit images of girls 7-15 on the computer, the report said.

“Upon speaking further, Bengt apologized for lying and admitted to utilizing the email address associated with the cybertip,” the report said.

Francke said he received the images in a Snapchat group and sent them to other people via Snapchat groups.

“Bengt further said the reason he chose to distribute the images and movies was because he wanted to “please people” and wanted to “contribute to the group.”

Francke is being held in custody without bond and charge.