July 18, 2022
Man Arrested in Newton County for the Sexual Exploitation of Children
Covington, GA (July 18, 2022) – On Wednesday, July 13, 2022, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes (CEACC) Unit, with the assistance of the Newton County Sheriff’s Office, and the Georgia Department of Community Supervision, executed a residential search warrant pertaining to an ongoing Sexual Exploitation of Children investigation. The investigation began after the GBI CEACC Unit received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The cybertip involved the possession and/or distribution of explicit child sexual abuse material, commonly referred to as child pornography, which resolved to Newton County, GA.
As a result of the search warrant execution, the following individual was arrested:
Johnny Jay Farino, age 65, of Covington, was charged with Sexual Exploitation of Children (Distribution of Child Pornography). At the time of his arrest, Farino was on the Georgia Sex Offender Registry after he was arrested in 2011 by the GBI and the Newton County Sheriff’s Office for the Sexual Exploitation of Children.
Farino was taken to the Newton County Jail.
This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit, to identify those involved in the child pornography trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U.S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child sexual abuse material, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.
Anyone with information about other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit at 404-270-8870. Tips can also be submitted by calling 1-800-597-TIPS(8477), online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online, or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.