His father is now facing multiple felony charges
Warning: This article contains discussions of child abuse, which may be distressing for some readers.
A man in Florida was left stunned when what started as a simple favor for his father led to a horrifying discovery.
While trying to help his dad access his email, he discovered something that forced him to take action and turn his own father over to the police.
Jared Follin, 30, had been asked by his father, 63-year-old Gene Follin, to assist in regaining access to his Gmail account after being locked out.
But what seemed like a routine tech issue took a shocking turn.
As Jared attempted to recover the account, he found something deeply disturbing—his father had been storing nearly 1,000 files of child pornography.
Gene Follin’s own son turned him in to police
Facebook
According to an arrest affidavit, Google had flagged Gene Follin’s account due to the presence of explicit content in his Google Photos storage.
Upon realizing what he had stumbled across, Jared immediately alerted the authorities.
A month later, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children flagged the account and passed the information to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
The investigation quickly advanced when the Kenneth City Police Department received a notification from a detective handling the case.
They traced the flagged account to an IP address registered to Gene Follin.
Armed with this information, detectives secured a search warrant and combed through the data.
They discovered an alarming 952 files containing disturbing and illegal material involving children.
Records show that the content had been uploaded over a span of more than a year, between March 13, 2023, and September 10, 2024.
Among the shocking materials found in his possession, investigators noted that some of the images featured young girls, with victims appearing to be as young as five years old.
Follin has been released from custody after posting his $100,000 bond
Kenneth City Police Dept
On January 28, authorities arrested Follin, charging him with multiple counts of possessing child pornography.
According to the arrest affidavit, he admitted to “saving child pornography” when questioned by the Kenneth City Police Department.
He now faces 20 felony charges. Each second-degree felony carries a potential prison sentence of up to 15 years.
Despite the severity of the charges, Follin was released just two days later, on January 30, after posting a $100,000 bond.
It remains unclear whether he has entered a plea at this time.
In 2017, Follin reportedly launched a GoFundMe campaign after suffering a heart attack and undergoing open-heart surgery.
The fundraiser portrayed him as a devoted father of three and a grandfather to three children, describing him as a kind and dependable man.
One part of the campaign read: “‘He is always there to make you smile and let you know that life is much more than the malarkey we each face every day.”