Ryan Eskeli

A Cody man is facing allegations that he shared child pornography through an online application over the span of more than a year.

Ryan A. Eskeli, 48, has been held in the Park County Detention Center since last week, with bail set at $100,000. He faces three felony counts of delivering child pornography, which, if he were to be found guilty, each carry a minimum sentence of five years in prison. The charges relate to specific videos that Eskeli shared on the messaging/social networking application Kik in February 2020, this past March and in August.

Some of the videos and images shared in group messages and private chats depicted children between the ages of 5 and 12 engaged in explicitly sexual conduct, charging documents allege.

In an interview conducted at the time of his Dec. 2 arrest, Eskeli “admitted that he had been struggling with viewing child pornography off and on for the past several years,” Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Colten Carpenter of Casper wrote in support of the charges. “Eskeli would stop viewing child pornography for a period of time, but eventually Eskeli would begin viewing it and distributing it again on the Kik application.”

In a message to another Kik user that agents later read on Eskeli’s phone, he reportedly claimed to have obtained children’s underwear from a laundromat and from an acquaintance’s home, but there’s no indication in charging documents as to whether that was true. Eskeli is not alleged to have been involved in the creation of any of the illicit images that he shared on Kik.

“Eskeli was adamant that he had never produced any child pornography files with any children and that he could not have lived with himself if he had,” Agent Carpenter wrote. “Eskeli was visibly upset with himself for receiving and distributing child pornography files.”

Charging documents indicate that the suspect first came to the attention of authorities in March 2020, when Kik flagged an account for sharing apparent child pornography. 

The tip was initially passed on to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and then forwarded to U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Nicole Bailey. She determined that the images of young girls had apparently been shared from Eskeli’s IP address in Cody, charging documents say.

Kik submitted another cybertip this past April and Carpenter found that the images flagged by the application had been shared by another IP address tied to Eskeli.

In July, authorities obtained a search warrant for information tied to Eskeli’s Kik accounts. According to Carpenter’s affidavit, the data logs indicated that Eskeli had shared multiple illegal images. One video he shared in mid-February 2020 went to a group of around 46 different users, the agent’s affidavit alleges, while another video he shared in a private chat in late March “contained a compilation of approximately 79 videos of prepubescent and pubescent females” who were seen either nude or engaged in sexual activity.

DCI obtained a search warrant for Eskeli’s devices on Dec. 1, and took him into custody the following day. A preliminary hearing — where a judge or magistrate will determine whether there’s enough evidence for the case to proceed toward a trial in District Court — is tentatively set for today (Thursday) in Park County Circuit Court.