Paul Melnick, 48, was arrested on a warrant for child sexual abuse material possession March 31, weeks after being charged with enticing a minor by computer, harmful communication with a minor and misrepresenting his age to entice a minor.
Six days after his Feb. 27 arrest on the enticement, harmful communication and misrepresentation charges, a warrant filed in state Superior Court in Danbury says investigators obtained and executed search warrants for Melnick’s home, vehicle and digital media.
They also gained access to a cloud storage account Melnick created in March 2024 that contained thousands of files of child sexual abuse material, according to the warrant.
The New Zealand-based cloud storage and communication service told police Melnick’s account was suspended in December 2024 following the detection of “illegal content,” and granted investigators temporary access to retrieve data, the warrant says.
When a detective signed into the account March 26, the warrant says he first found a cloud drive containing 249 video files — thumbnails of which contained “depictions of … prepubescent females engaging vicarious sexual acts.”
The warrant says the detective located more than 44,000 additional files in Melnick’s account, 36,502 of which he was able to successfully download, and obtained a warrant to view the files.
“Due to the enormity of files downloaded,” the warrant says the detective previewed “a small percentage of the 36,502 files” and found “an overwhelming majority” contained child sexual abuse material imagery of children “ranging in age from what appeared to be young toddlers to teenagers.”
Melnick, who has been in state Department of Correction custody since his Feb. 27 arrest, was served with a warrant charging him with possession of child sexual abuse material March 31.
He is being held on a total bond of $400,000, with pretrial hearing scheduled for May 26.
