Google tipped off authorities to illicit images in Canadian doctor's account, search warrants say
CBC
WARNING: This story discusses child sexual abuse material and contains graphic details of alleged sexual assault
For the last few years, Dr. David Edward-Ooi Poon was providing psychotherapy in Ontario and public-health services in northern Saskatchewan, after rising to prominence in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then last summer, a tip from Google — one of millions sent every year to a U.S. child-protection organization — kicked off a chain of events that ultimately landed him in pre-trial jail on 43 sex-crime charges, according to allegations in a police court document.
In an unproven affidavit filed in court to obtain a search warrant, Toronto police say the U.S. tech giant flagged 11 images of suspected child sexual abuse material uploaded last August to a Google Drive account in Poon's name.
Most such tips, child-protection advocates say, draw little to no police action because they either turn out not to involve illicit content or because of limited investigative resources. But this case appears to have triggered a robust response.
As CBC News first reported last week, Poon was charged by Toronto police in November with two counts of accessing and possessing child sexual abuse and exploitation material. Detectives laid 41 more charges in December including making and possessing child pornography, sexual assault, voyeurism for a sexual purpose and drugging someone to facilitate sexual assault. Toronto police say the investigation is ongoing.
Neither the criminal charges nor allegations in a police application for search warrants, obtained by CBC News, have been proven in court. After the first two charges were filed, Poon's lawyers told the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario the accusations were unrelated to his medical practice and he intended to "vigorously oppose" them. Neither Poon nor his lawyers responded to multiple requests for comment from CBC News.
Poon is currently in a Toronto jail, with one of his lawyers telling a court hearing last week they are waiting for more evidence disclosure from the Crown before deciding about applying for bail.
How he got there is laid out in allegations filed in court by a detective from the Toronto Police Service's internet child exploitation team.
That "information to obtain" document, or ITO, was filed as part of an application to get search warrants for Poon's downtown Toronto apartment and for his electronic devices
It says Google sent nine alerts last August and September to a U.S.-government funded non-profit organization called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The NCMEC serves as a clearinghouse for such reports and receives tens of millions of them every year, largely from tech platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The alerts flagged 11 images suspected to be child sexual abuse material that Google reported as being uploaded last Aug. 4 and 5 to a Google Drive account registered with Poon's name, birthdate, phone number and email address, the ITO says.
The Toronto detective alleges that after the alerts were passed to the RCMP and then Toronto police, she looked at three of the images and found they depicted naked prepubescent girls. The images included an explicit sex act and exposed genitals.
The document indicates the detective requested cellphone records for the phone number and internet account information for the IP address allegedly used to upload the material in order to find out who was behind the Google account.
WARNING: This story discusses child sexual abuse material and contains graphic details of alleged sexual assault
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