Man with ties to owner of Baltimore-based Berger Cookies faces child pornography charges
TOWSON -- A Baltimore County man with ties to one of the area's most famous cookies is facing serious child pornography charges.
Corey DeBaufre, whose family owns Berger Cookies, is facing two counts each for possessing and distributing child pornography.
DeBaufre had a bail review hearing last Friday, where he was ordered to be held without bail. However, he was also ordered to home detention.
He isn't allowed to use the internet or have any contact with minors, according to court records, as conditions of his release.
DeBaufre will be back in court on Jan. 10 for a preliminary hearing.
Following the tips
A Baltimore County Police detective first started investigating in October after getting a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to charging documents.
The tip reported potential child pornography was uploaded on Sept. 25 to an account with Synchronoss Technologies.
The uploaded file was a video depicting a girl who looked to be approximately 7-to-8-years-old, according to charging documents.
The second tip, which was received in November, was sent in the messaging app Kik. Another Baltimore County Police detective started to investigate.
In this tip, two videos were included. One was the same video from the previous tip, while the second depicted a girl who looked to be 4-to-6-years old, according to charging documents.
Looking into the IP addresses and the phone numbers associated with the accounts, the detectives were both lead to DeBaufre. The accounts had the same IP address, which was under a business account with his father.
Last Thursday, a search and seizure warrant was served at DeBaufre's home in Parkville.
While talking to police, according to charging documents, DeBaufre "took ownership" of the accounts by confirming it was his phone number and email on them.
A cellphone associated with the Synchronoss Technologies account was also recovered from the home.
It's not clear how Corey DeBaufre could have gotten these videos or how long he may have had them.
Being safe online
Anton Dahbura is co-director of the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Assured Autonomy. The institute looks at how to successfully integrate AI with society.
He said it's important for parents to know how their kids spend time online.
"Just because your child is happily engaged in front of a monitor for a couple of hours [doesn't mean it's] time for you to be disengaged from what they're doing," Dahbura said. "How they're interacting with the technology and, perhaps, other people."
Dahbura said it's especially important with the proliferation and accessibility of AI technology. He calls the amount of ready-to-use technology that can modify images, videos and videos in real-time a gamechanger.
"There's the great potential to use AI as a guardian to be able to monitor your child's activities and warn [us] if there's something that just doesn't seem right -- but that's probably a few years off," he said.