ST. CLOUD — A 52-year-old Osceola County man who fled the state during an active investigation faces 80 felony counts of possession of child sexual abuse material after authorities tracked him to Arkansas and arrested him, Attorney General James Uthmeier announced.
Adam Wahlgren of St. Cloud was taken into custody by the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office in Lonoke, Arkansas, on May 1. He is expected to be extradited to Florida, where he faces up to 1,200 years in the Florida Department of Corrections if convicted as charged.
“This predator thought that he could escape the consequences of his depraved behavior by running to another state. He was wrong,” said Attorney General James Uthmeier. “In Florida, we will find you and bring you back to face our prosecutors in court.”
The investigation began when the St. Cloud Police Department received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children indicating Wahlgren was possessing, viewing and transmitting child sexual abuse material via Synchronoss, Verizon’s data storage service. The tip was initially assigned to the Sanford Police Department and the Orlando Police Department, which traced the IP address and determined jurisdiction belonged to St. Cloud police.
Officers executed a search warrant at Wahlgren’s St. Cloud residence and seized multiple electronic devices — one tablet, two laptop computers, one desktop computer, nine USB drives, two external drives, two SD cards and 28 hard drives. Preliminary forensic extractions revealed extremely graphic images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including files in which young children were physically bound. Over 100,000 files were located on a single device.
Investigators discovered during the active case that Wahlgren had fled the state, prompting the multistate effort that ended with his arrest in Arkansas.
Senior Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Lauryn Day will prosecute the case in the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida. The investigation is ongoing, and additional charges may be filed.