ATHENS, Pennsylvania — Three men in Pennsylvania's northern tier are in county prisons on $250,000 bail each after a week-long Internet Crimes Against Children operation by the Pennsylvania State Police ended with three house searches and 87 felony counts, the state police announced on Thursday, November 5. The men — from LeRoy, Athens and Coudersport — are each charged with felony possession of child sexual abuse material after the Northeast Computer Crime Task Force executed three residential search warrants in Bradford and Potter counties between October 29 and November 4.

Source: Pennsylvania State Police, Bureau of Criminal Investigation — Northeast Computer Crime Task Force release, carried by Tioga Publishing (Potter Leader-Enterprise), November 5, 2026

The task force — the state police Bureau of Criminal Investigation unit that handles computer-crime and online child-exploitation cases across northeastern and north-central Pennsylvania — said the operation was aimed at identifying offenders involved in the possession, distribution and production of child sexual abuse material. Alongside the three searches, investigators closed out eight cyber-tips referred by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the national clearinghouse that receives reports from internet companies and the public and routes them to the law-enforcement agency covering the address involved.

Three men, three homes, 87 counts

Brian Scott Nicholls, of LeRoy, Bradford County, faces 13 counts of sexual abuse of children (possession), a third-degree felony under Section 6312(d) of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code, plus one count of criminal use of a communication facility, also a third-degree felony under Section 7512(a) — 14 counts in all, the state police said. Nicholls was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Larry J. Hurley, who set bail at $250,000, and was remanded to the Bradford County Prison.

Aaron Gary Hovan, of Athens, Bradford County, faces the heaviest sheet: 30 counts of sexual abuse of children (possession) graded as second-degree felonies and a further 30 counts graded as third-degree felonies — 60 counts in total, according to the task force release. Hovan was also arraigned before Judge Hurley, with bail set at $250,000, and was remanded to the Bradford County Prison alongside Nicholls.

Logan Matthew Benson, of Coudersport, the Potter County seat, faces 10 counts of sexual abuse of children (possession) as second-degree felonies, two further counts as third-degree felonies and one count of criminal use of a communication facility — 13 counts in all. Benson was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Bryan D. Phelps, who also set bail at $250,000, and was remanded to the Potter County Prison.

How cases like these start: a tip, an address, a warrant

None of the three cases began with a patrol officer or a neighbour's call. They began the way most online-exploitation cases in the United States now begin: an electronic service provider detected suspected child sexual abuse material on its systems and reported it to NCMEC's CyberTipline, and the tip was forwarded to Pennsylvania investigators, who identified the subscriber and address behind the account and took that evidence to a judge for a search warrant. The state police release gives no ages for the three men and names no victims — possession cases of this kind are built on what investigators say they found on devices and accounts, and the release does not describe any contact offence against a child in Bradford or Potter county. Every charge in all three cases is an allegation: each man is presumed innocent unless and until the Commonwealth proves the charges in court.

Section 6312 of the Crimes Code is Pennsylvania's central child sexual abuse material statute: subsection (d) covers knowingly possessing or controlling material depicting a child under 18 in a sexual act or simulation. The grading — second-degree felony on some counts, third-degree on others — is set by the statute and the circumstances alleged in each count, and the separate communication-facility count under Section 7512(a) covers the alleged use of a phone, computer or other communication device to commit the underlying offence. Bradford and Potter are rural counties along Pennsylvania's northern border with New York — farming, timber and gas country — and the arrests are a reminder the state police repeat after every such operation: these investigations follow IP addresses and accounts, not postcodes, and they land in small towns as readily as in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.

For Punjabi and other immigrant families across Pennsylvania — concentrated in Philadelphia, the Lehigh Valley, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, with truckers crossing the northern tier weekly on US-15 and US-6 — the practical lesson of this operation is the one state police and child-safety groups give every time: the cases start on ordinary apps, games and messaging services, and the single most effective protection is a parent knowing which accounts a child holds and a child knowing they can report an approach without getting in trouble. The task force runs these operations county by county across the region on a rolling basis; this is the second ICAC arrest story from Pennsylvania's state police network in two days of reporting, and investigators say the tip volume from providers keeps rising year over year.

What happens next: all three men have been arraigned and are being held in lieu of $250,000 bail. Their cases now move to preliminary hearings before the magisterial district judges who arraigned them, where prosecutors must show enough evidence to send the charges to the Bradford and Potter county courts of common pleas; the state police release does not list hearing dates. Digital evidence seized under the three warrants will be forensically examined, and in comparable task-force cases that examination is what determines whether counts are added, reduced or withdrawn before trial. Awaaz Punjab will follow the court listings in both counties and update this story when hearing dates are published.