Teacher facing child porn charges in US flees, is caught filming child abroad, feds say
A former teacher is facing jail time after prosecutors say he downloaded child sexual abuse material to his work laptop, fled the country, and lived abroad illegally for years.
David Matthew Frahm, 47, of Iowa was sentenced to 13 years in prison for possession of child pornography and engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, according to a Nov. 15 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Districts of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
“Frahm preyed on children in the far corners of the Indo-Pacific region,” U.S. Attorney Shawn Anderson said in the release.
According to prosecutors, in 2019, authorities found a picture of “a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” on Frahm’s school-issued laptop while he was a teacher for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an unincorporated territory of the U.S.
The picture came from a “defunct Ukrainian company” that produced child porn “under the guise” of being a modeling studio, officials said in the release.
After authorities began investigating Frahm’s conduct, he “abandoned the computer” before catching a flight to Malaysia where he “lived illegally for four years,” officials said.
While in Malaysia, he used his phone to film an 11-year-old getting out of the shower, officials said.
Friends of the victim contacted U.S. authorities who worked with the Royal Malaysian Police to detain Frahm, officials said.
Frahm was “escorted by the FBI” back to the Northern Mariana Islands and arrested June 8, officials said.
A third count relating to Frahm’s 2019 attempt to photograph children using a toilet was dropped as part of a plea agreement, according to the release.
This story was originally published November 18, 2024 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Teacher facing child porn charges in US flees, is caught filming child abroad, feds say."
