IRON COUNTY, Utah, Sept. 12, 2021 (Gephardt Daily) — An inmate at the Iron County Jail is facing 10 new felony charges after he allegedly talked about illegal images his girlfriend found stored on his phone.
Michael Anthony Bertolini, 37 and serving time on drug convictions, faces 10 new charges of exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, which were filed Friday.
An officer was reviewing phone calls made from the jail when he came upon a call from Bertolini discussing “images of child pornography that his girlfriend had found on his phone,” Bertolini’s new probable cause statement says.
The officer responded to the home of the inmate’s girlfriend, who confirmed finding the images. An investigation was launched by the Cedar City Police Department.
Bertolini is a participant in a drug court program for the Iron County Sheriff‘s Department, and an element of that program is the agreement that officials can search his phone at any time.
Dozens of “obvious” child pornography images were found, Bertolini’s probable cause statement says.
“Under Miranda, he stated that he does have about 50 to 100 images of child pornography on his phone,” the affidavit says.
“He stated that all of these images were downloaded by him and placed onto his phone by him. He even placed most of these into a secret calculator application on his phone that is a secure picture vault.
“After speaking to the Iron County Attorney I have charged Michael with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor for the possession of these images of child pornography.”
