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Federal Grand Jury Indicts Boone Man On Child Pornography Charges

WFDD file photo.

A federal grand jury in Charlotte has handed down multiple sex charges against a Boone man.

The charges are the result of a probe by Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations and the Boone Police Department.

Frank Darrell Cromwell, 23, of Boone is charged with 21 crimes including production of child pornography, enticing a minor, and cyberstalking.

Prosecutors allege that Cromwell used a cell phone app and other means to entice minor male victims to produce sexually explicit images and videos. Court documents include allegations that Cromwell misled the victims by posing as a female online. 

Law enforcement officers have identified ten victims, according to a release from the United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina.

Cromwell was serving as an athletic trainer at Watauga High School through an internship from Appalachian State University. Prosecutors allege he met some of his victims through that internship.

The charges are allegations and have not been proven in court.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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