FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A man flying to South Florida from Qatar to report to duty on a cargo ship was instead taken to jail in Broward County after federal agents said they found “multiple sexually explicit videos of minors” on his cellphone.
Jail records show Parvesh Yadav, a 29-year-old Indian national, was booked into the Paul Rein Detention Facility on Wednesday.
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According to a criminal complaint, he arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Qatar Airways Flight 777 from Doha on Tuesday; online flight tracking records show the plane had been diverted from its intended destination, Miami International Airport.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel referred Yadav, who was set to report for work on the MSC Don Giovanni, to a secondary border screening, where they inspected his devices, the complaint states.
Authorities described seven videos found on Yadav’s phone during the search. They said they depicted girls as young as 12 being sexually abused.
The complaint states that Yadav told agents that he “habitually downloads groups of files from pornographic group chats on Telegram and that these files could contain child pornography among them, which he does not verify after download.”
Agents said Yadav told them that he believed any instances of child sexual abuse material were “saved accidentally” and said he saves pornography to an external hard drive before spending months at sea with limited Internet access.
Yadav, charged with counts of transportation and possession of child pornography, appeared in Fort Lauderdale federal court Wednesday and is scheduled for a bond hearing next Wednesday, federal court records show.