Los Angeles Firefighter / Engineer Luis Gutierrez, 49 and 10 others busted in CHILD PORN STING - Luis Gutierrez was downloading & trading porn on the Internet at the firehouse while on duty

Authorities Tuesday arrested 11 Los Angeles area men, including a firefighter, accused of using peer-to-peer file-sharing programs to receive, possess or distribute child pornography following a three-year investigation.

Operation Wide Net has resulted in dozens of defendants being prosecuted for child pornography offenses and the execution of over 100 federal and state search warrants in the Los Angeles area over the last three years. Authorities Tuesday announced the arrest of:

• Luis Gutierrez, 49, of Chino, was previously indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography obtained through the use of the Ares file-sharing program. Gutierrez was an engineer with the Los Angeles City Fire Department in 2013 at the time of the alleged offenses and investigators believe that he used internet connections at three different fire stations to download the child pornography found on his computer.

• Gerald Patrick Beaver, 53, of Cerritos, was arrested based on operations in New Zealand and Oklahoma in which undercover officers allegedly observed him offering to distribute child pornography over the internet using the Gigatribe file-sharing program.

A federal grand jury previously indicted Beaver and charged him with one count of advertising child pornography, two counts of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. While searching Beaver’s home, authorities allegedly found more than 6,000 images and more than 400 videos of child pornography on his computer.

• Jace Jeanes, 39, of Torrance, is charged with receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography that he allegedly obtained using the BitTorrent file-sharing program. Jeanes allegedly possessed more than 20,000 images and videos of child pornography on computer equipment found during a search of his residence.

• Steven David Lavinsky, 58, of Long Beach, is charged in a three-count indictment with advertising, distributing and possessing child pornography in a case involving the Gigatribe file-sharing program.

• Kenneth Martin Medellin, 55, of Carson, is charged with receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography using the Limewire file-sharing program.

CLICK FOR MORE