Gates County Repeat Offender Convicted on Child Porn Charges

NEW BERN, N.C. – A federal jury convicted Myron Curtis Pelech, 46, of Gates County, also known as “Ping Pelech,” of transporting and possessing child porn.

“This habitual pervert will no longer feed his disgusting fetishes hurting vulnerable children to stoke his twisted self-gratification. We will not tolerate this type of depraved behavior here,” said U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle. “This spider will only spin his web behind cold steel bars.”

At the time of his arrest, Pelech was already on federal supervised release following a prior conviction in the Eastern District of North Carolina for receiving child porn in 2016. He had only been out of prison for less than a year before agents caught him engaging in this new similar criminal conduct.

FBI agents arrested Pelech after tracing a significant volume of child sexual abuse material shared over the BitTorrent network to his room at the Regency Inn in Fayetteville. The BitTorrent Network is a decentralized system for sharing files across the internet. Instead of downloading a file from one central server, BitTorrent lets many users share pieces of the file with each other at the same time and in this case, child porn. 

When agents executed a search warrant at his room, they recovered a concealed cell phone and tablet hidden under the television stand. A forensic review of the cell phone revealed that Pelech had saved a screenshot of a website dedicated to child sexual exploitation. Agents unlocked the tablet and located more than 150 videos and over 200 images of child sexual abuse material. The files depicted abhorrent severe exploitation of very young children.

Pelech faces a federal prison sentence of 15 to 40 years for transporting child pornography and 10 to 20 years for possessing child pornography.

Ellis Boyle, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina made the announcement after U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan accepted the verdict. The FBI is investigating the case.

A copy of this press release is located on our website. Related court documents and information can be found on the website of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina or on PACER by searching for Case No. 7:22-CR-367-FL.