Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A former Gow School administrator has been charged with child porn possession.
Federal prosecutors say 50-year-old Matthew Fisher of South Wales turned his school-owned laptop into the IT Department because the keyboard was not working properly.
They add an IT employee was notified of a “Low Severity Alert” on Fisher’s school-issued laptop. While searching the laptop, the employee recovered files, which included links such as “Neverland” and “lost boys.” The employee accessed one of the webpages, which depicted naked boys under the age of 10 conducting sexual acts on each other. The employee copied and moved the files to a thumb drive and notified the Head of The Gow School.
The thumb drive was turned over to the FBI and the Western New York Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory conducted a preliminary forensic analysis, which recovered images of child pornography.
Prosecutors say some of the images appear to be from a covert camera and depict clothed, male children in a bedroom believed to be on campus of The Gow School. The images include timestamps ranging from January of 2019 through September of 2023.
Fisher has been fired from The Gow School.
Fisher made an initial appearance this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy and is being held pending a detention hearing on Nov. 17, 2023.