Child Porn Charges Filed Against Arlington Man

ARLINGTON, VA — An Arlington man was arrested on Saturday by federal law enforcement officers for receiving and possessing child pornography, according to court documents.

The suspect was also the subject of an Arlington County police investigation into a meet-up last December between the suspect, identified as Patrick Wanamaker and a 20-year-old man. The man reported to authorities that during the meeting, Wanamaker told him that he had previously sexually abused an infant by performing oral sex on the child, court records say.

On Oct. 1, 2025, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Wanamaker's home and seized multiple items, including an Apple iPhone 15, according to an affidavit filed Jan. 9 by an agent with the FBI Washington Field Office's Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. The suspect was present during the search.

A forensic examination of Wanamaker's iPhone and another cellphone obtained by the FBI revealed child pornography and child erotica files, including images of prepubescent children engaged in various sexual acts, according to the affidavit. The title of one of the images was a string of numbers followed by ".mp4" indicating that it had been taken from a video.

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"This image originated from the Telegram application on the iPhone 15 and was saved in the photo data on the iPhone 15 with a creation date of August 11, 2023, and a last accessed date of August 18, 2024," the affidavit said.

On Oct. 28, the FBI filed a request with Dropbox for information related to Wanamaker's Gmail account. Dropbox provided two files from the account, one entitled "Pack 2" and another "Stuff," which contained sexually explicit images that appeared to depict teenage boys, according to the affidavit.

Investigators also found several emails containing links using Mega, a secure, end-to-end encrypted cloud storage and communication platform, court records say. The Mega links were also found in Apple Notes application on the iPhone.

On Jan. 7, the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit requested a federal search warrant for the content in the Mega links section of Wanamaker's devices.

"The Mega links contained numerous child pornography images and videos, including a video of a toddler being digitally and anally penetrated by an adult male," the agent wrote, adding that the FBI was still examining the various devices seized from Wanamaker.

Investigators also determined that Wanamaker had a prior "youthful offender adjudication" in New York for the possession of an obscene sexual performance by a child, court records say.

Wanamaker has a preliminary hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. on Tuesday in the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, according to court documents.